Eames the Liar
by The Secret Miracle
Summary: COMPLETED 10/29. Mr. Eames is good at a lot of things, but all of them are based in one key ability: his ability to lie. An origin story of sorts, set some time after the movie. Eames/Arthur slash, rated M for language and adult situations.
1. This Is Eames

This, is Eames.

She doesn't look like an Eames, I know. She looks like a Tanya, or a Jasmine, or maybe even a Stella. But she's not. I don't care how sexy she is, I don't care how good she looks in that little black dress or how well she wears those Louboutins. She isn't any of those things. Because really, she's this guy—handsome, devil-may-care, pale and British Mr. Eames, with absolutely no sense of fashion and the uncanny but endlessly useful ability to make you think he's somebody else.

Eames often says he knows every gangster in London. This doesn't really surprise anyone—no one's totally clear on his past, his history as a criminal, what led him to the top of the forger food chain in the heady world of dream-infiltration, and nobody really feels the need to ask. They know it had to be good, and that's good enough for them. See, Mr. Eames is good at a lot of things, but all of them are based in one key ability: his ability to lie. If you asked anyone in the business who was the most likable, trustworthy guy they've ever worked with, there's a pretty good bet you'd get across-the-board votes for guess who. But it's not that he's good with your secrets, or always lets you know what he's thinking, nothing like that. It's his confidence. He makes you like him, makes you trust him, makes you believe everything he says. And that just naturally extends to his job. He wants you to think he's a hot black girl in her twenties? Done. Maybe a sixty-year old American bureaucrat? No problem. I've even seen him pull off an eleven-year-old Chinese boy with a stunted leg.

The point is, nobody really thought about actually asking Eames who he was, where he came from. I don't even know what his first name is, and that's me, and if anyone's going to know it should definitely be me, but I choose not to ask. I know nobody knows. To everyone he's just Eames. And that's typical for the London gangster, all with their cute nicknames and titles, no other identification needed. For a surname Eames is common enough, but in this business, you say Eames to another guy engaged in the trade, and he _knows_ who you mean.

Which is why it doesn't surprise me any when our meet with the latest in a long run of rich English crime lord clients gives a massive double take when he walks into the room and his eyes drift over to Eames.

What _does_ surprise me is the way the blood drains from Eames's face when it happens.

"Archy," I say, ever the friendly businessman. I shake his hand, and I notice his eyes don't really move too much from my partner. "Have a seat."

The job is about Archy's boss: one Johnny Quid, former rocker, former junkie, full-time Real RocknRolla. I didn't know what that meant when we got into this, but it's always my job to do the research and I figured out pretty fast. Eames only just got in today, and I assumed pretty correctly that he knew all the terms and maybe even most of the players, so why bother explaining things?

I can tell from the way he's staring at me across the table that this is a case where I really should have.

"So, the famous Arthur," says Archy approvingly, slick and full of English charm. He broods on me for a minute, then turns to Eames, who shifts his gaze onto the job folder so hard I'm almost surprised it doesn't spontaneously go up in flames. Cool and determined, Archy says, "And you are…"

Hilarious. So I get to be middleman to whatever this is.

"This is my partner Mr. Eames," I tell him. I look at Eames, waiting for him, feel free to jump in any time here, you bastard, but it's all on me as usual. "Best forger in the business, if you can get past the occasional silent treatment."

"You've got it under control, Arthur," says Eames coolly and without looking up.

Archy looks delighted. Not like gleeful, but like he's seeing something that really, really intrigues the hell out of him, and he never thought he'd ever see it, and ain't this his lucky day. Something seriously went down here. I clear my throat and push business forward in hopes of getting him out of here and getting to the bottom of this.

Eames doesn't respond well under pressure, and you can't wring a damn thing from him if he doesn't want you to, but you could say I've got him fingered in kind of a different way from anyone else. You know, the kind of way where he takes his clothes off if I look at him right. That kind of way.

Anyway.

So Archy explains the deal, how Johnny took over his late father's empire and started up a nice racket in just about every dirty business there was to be had. Apparently he's smart, smarter than anyone, and just about impossible to kill.

"Does that mean you've already tried to kill him?" I ask, and he smirks at me.

"No," he says. "I have nothing against Johnny."

"And yet here you are," says Eames, and this is well after I've already come to the conclusion he's not going to say a single damn thing this entire meeting. It catches us both by surprise, though I suspect for different reasons, and we look at him for a moment.

"Johnny's been through a lot," says Archy, once he decides he's done eyeing Eames and trying to make him uncomfortable. "He's come a long way in a little time, but I'm worried about him, to be honest."

"About him or about yourself?" says Eames.

It's times like these when I know to stay the fuck out of everybody's way. I sit and watch back and forth between them as they have their official stare down of the No Arthur Allowed Club.

"About him," says Archy, and the room temperature loses about five degrees. "That's why I said 'I'm worried about him, to be honest.'"

"Well to be honest with you, Archibald," says Eames, and he's turning into someone I don't know, but unlike all the other times where he does that, this time he's still Eames, and that's more than a little alarming, "I don't really know how far I can trust your honesty, do I?"

There's another gaping silence during which I really don't know what to do.

"You know, you're still quite handsome," says Archy, and he's back to catlike smoothness. "Even with the fashion change."

"I think you'll find I've changed more than just that," says Eames.

"Okay," I say, deciding enough's efuckingnough and I'm going to risk crossing into it. "I don't know what the hell is going on here, but I can assure you both it is less than productive."

Archy shoots a look at me then, and he's looking a little delighted again. Back at Eames, he says, "Does he not _know_ about you, you enormous wanker?"

"Shut up, Archy," says Eames, and real abruptly he gets up and starts walking away.

"Eames!" I shout, useless because this is one moment where looking at him the right way isn't going to help.

"I'm not dealing with him until he learns some fucking manners," says Eames, and my untrained ear catches the faint trace of a different accent, something that's been covered up.

"Excuse me," I say to Archy, which is stupid but what else was I going to do? and I go running after him as he departs into the next room.

"Eames," I say, following him in. "Eames!" I catch him on the shoulder and spin him around, and he's anticipating it enough that he gets right in my face and knocks me back a little.

"How the fuck could you not have informed me about this?" he snaps. "Why didn't I know it was him, of all fucking people?"

"Well I didn't know you two had all this history, did I?" I protest. "You weren't around, I just thought—"

"Jesus _Christ_, Arthur," he says, and he's really torn up about this, pacing around like a caged animal. Something is really, really wrong.

"I'm sorry, okay?" I say as gently as I can, as pissed off as I am. "Look, I don't even know what's going on in there. Your name didn't exactly come up in his file."

"Well it wouldn't, would it?" he says.

"Eames, just _tell _me what happened," I say with great patience. He is quiet for a moment, and for a moment I think I've got him, but I'd be wrong.

"Finish up with him," he says. "Find out what he wants. I'll be upstairs."

He goes, and I don't feel like trying to stop him. Truth is I've never seen him this rattled, and that scares me a little. I take a moment to straighten myself out, and then I go back in to deal with Archy, who's waiting for me calm as ever, like I just stepped out for a smoke.

"You've been working with him long?" he asks casually as I return to the table and sit back down.

"Few years now," I say guardedly. "First it was just a handful of jobs here and there, but we became business partners last year." He's not looking at me, examining his cuticles.

"Know anything about his background?" he wonders.

"Listen, don't toy with me," I say, losing my patience in a big damn hurry because to hell with this shit. "You and I both know I'm completely in the dark about what just happened. You'll tell me or you won't, and I've got a pretty good idea which. There's only one other person I'm gonna get it from, and that's up to him. So if you don't mind, I'd like to get on with business here and call it a day. I've got damage control to run, or didn't you notice?"

I sit back, previously unaware I'd leaned forward at all, and exhale in an irritable burst. I wasn't quite expecting to get that open with him, and I can tell he wasn't expecting it either, the way he's looking at me, half-impressed. Gets him to focus, though, and soon enough he's back on track.

Turns out Archy's big problem these days is being out of the loop. He's a guy who likes knowing things, and back when he was working for Johnny's stepfather, this Lenny Cole guy, that's all he did, was know things. But the business has changed since then, and I get the feeling Archy had a pretty big hand in it changing, and maybe now he regrets it a little.

So our job is simple: get inside Johnny Quid's head and figure out whether or not and to what extent he's planning something behind Archy's back, something big, something dangerous, and something that'll ruin them both and topple the empire.

"Have you got any stipulations about who we use?" I ask, because it's always good form to make sure.

"I'll be honest with you," he says, charitably. "I'm new to this whole extraction business. Only recently heard anything about it. I don't exactly know anyone involved."

"Is that so," I say with a calm smile that annoys him just a little.

"Just use people you know you can trust, all right?" he says. "People that aren't gonna waste my time." As if this reminds him not to waste his own time, he gets up and buttons his coat in a hurry. Like an afterthought, he slides a little card of scribbled information across the table to me. "Johnny's stationed in this estate a few miles outside London for the next couple of weeks. How long is it going to take you to be in position?"

"Do you have a deadline?"

"Soon as possible's fine with me," he says.

I shrug. "We'll need a few days in between to run a full background check and get the people we need. And once we arrive it might take us a few more to figure out the right time and place."

He waves a hand dismissively. "Come on, I can get you whatever information you need. I can get you to him when he sleeps, too."

"Much obliged," I say. "But we like doing our research ourselves, if you don't mind."

He smiles a little suggestively, just a little. "Right," he says. "Well, I look forward to seeing what clever games you two can play." He darts a look at the door Eames disappeared through, then back at me. "Keep in touch, but only between the hours of three and five, and only at the number I gave you."

I give him a nod and a wave that comes dangerously close to being a salute, and he's finally off.

There's just a few moments where I think about looking through the case file, letting Eames brood upstairs by himself. But the file is full of reasons to worry, and may or may not be full of things I might not be ready to know about my partner, and he looks especially good when he broods. So I sigh and I go upstairs.

* * *

**A Note on the Work:** This is a work in progress; a new chapter will be up here soon. If you haven't already figured it out, this is a crossover with Guy Ritchie's 2008 London gangster movie _RocknRolla_, which starred, among other awesome people, Gerard Butler as One Two, Mark Strong as Archy, and Tom Hardy as Handsome Bob. Familiarity with _RocknRolla_ is helpful but not necessary to your enjoyment of this piece, which is set more firmly in _Inception_'s universe than in _RocknRolla_'s.

Also, a note on the narration: I'm trying to stay close to Guy Ritchie's style, that is usually one of the main characters narrating events, even those he wasn't present for. So if Arthur starts talking about stuff he shouldn't have any earthly notion about, and later behaves as if he actually doesn't have any earthly notion about it, that's intentional. Think of it as there being two Arthurs—omnipotent narrator Arthur, and actual in-story Arthur. On top of that there'll be random passages which suddenly affect third person for no real reason, and of course the whole thing—flashbacks included—is going to be in present tense. Hang on chaps, it's gonna be a wild ride.


	2. This Is How We Got Here

Eames is thinking about the first time we met.

See I wasn't always what he likes to call a stick in the mud. He knows it better than anyone, and he remembers what I used to be better than me. You could say I led a charmed life, all expensive schools and happening to be in the right place at the right time. Following an extremely brief stint in the military, which was of course where I learned about the PASIV technology when it was in the earliest stages (I may or may not have been a key player in bringing it to the black market), I found myself spending a lot of time lounging outside bars and smoking whatever cigarettes I could get my hands on, with stupid haircuts and dark eyeliner and nail polish. Before you get the wrong idea about me, let me just make one thing expressly clear: it was all an act. After four prestigious scholarships and two early graduations and one spoiled military job, you start looking for any way possible to fight the power. So I became a criminal and a master of self-destruction, briefly. And that's when it happened.

This is where he meets Arthur.

Eames has an impeccable memory; you have to, in this line of work. So Eames remembers Arthur clear as day, leaning all sharp-angled and cagey-eyed against the outer bricked wall of a south London pub, cigarette hanging between perfect lips, looking for all the world like a deadbeat punk and not fooling anyone.

Eames remembers plucking the cigarette from his lips and slipping it between his own. That little flare in his eyes, the attitude, the quick, hot thrill that led him to pick easy, stupid fights. Eames prefers Arthur as he is now, still with the sharp eyes and the keen, thrill-seeking attitude, but kept at bay, wrapped up tight under layers of fitted clothing, waiting for the appropriate moment to come out. Arthur's always in control except for those exquisite moments where he doesn't need to be, and he's incomparably more comfortable this way. But as much as Eames prefers the real Arthur, there's something to be said for how he was then—when it was a bright flash and a smirk and a cocked hip, so much suggestion and so little effort. Simple untruth, naked posing. Eames remembers suspecting that no one knew the real Arthur.

"Give that back," says Arthur, and he's so, so American. Eames loves Americans.

"It's bad for you," he says, and takes a long drag. "It'll kill you, you know."

"Yeah, who the fuck are you, the Surgeon General?" says Arthur, but he's watching Eames's lips now, sucking gently on the cigarette. Arthur smokes Camel Lites, he smokes Djarums, he smokes stale-smelling Pall Malls and calls them "the cigarette of Edward R. Murrow." He'll smoke anything. Do anything. Eames sees that immediately.

"No," says Eames, and he places a new one between Arthur's parted lips and lights it for him; Arthur didn't even notice him lift the pack, and now he doesn't care.

Arthur grins at him and takes the cigarette between two slim fingers. "I'm seeing someone," he says.

"Not right now," says Eames. "Not as much as you're seeing me."

"Arthur, there you are," says Mal, appearing out of nowhere like she was so good at even then. "I see you've met Mr. Eames."

"Eames the forger Eames?" says Arthur, and throws Eames another look, a judgmental one, tracing him up and down. Eames feels a little bit undressed by it, and that's okay. "I thought he'd be… I don't know, more of a face in the crowd."

"Thank you, Arthur," says Eames. He wants to say something smart about how Arthur's the most ridiculously off-kilter point man he's ever seen; he wants to wait for Mal to turn and then trail his hand up the boy's inner thigh. He doesn't do these things, but he looks at Arthur like he wants to. Arthur slides down to his knees to put the cigarette out on the ground, right next to Eames's shoe. He glances up and he smiles, and it is all Eames can do to control his breathing. He's never met anyone like Arthur, and he's got it bad. Arthur knows it.

Mal is already leaving; she knows them both so well nothing surprises her. Arthur straightens up and he follows her with a quick walk, reminiscent of what it would become, sharp and dogged, tinged with perfected nonchalance.

Eames watches him go, watches the perfect line of his tight clothes and his slim body, thinks about pressing him down into a mattress and feeling him writhe.

Eames licks his lips and follows them.

They have a job to do; Cobb and Mal are the architects and the extractors, back before they got so good at it that everything got shot to hell, Arthur's a damn fine point man for such a bad liar, and Eames lies better than anyone. For example: Eames pretends he doesn't notice these things about Arthur, pretends not to want him as bad as he does, pretends not to love the open flirtation that ensues. Eames is convincing.

When I come into the room he's sitting on the edge of the bed staring out the window like a flying whale's just gone by. He pretends not to hear me come in.

"Feeling better?" I ask.

His shoulders pinch a little like they do when he's annoyed, and he lets out a frustrated sigh. I climb onto the bed behind him and try to give him a massage. I'm not very good at it and I'm way tenser than he is, but I know he'll put up with the effort.

"Mind telling me what that was all about?" I say eventually.

Eames does mind. Eames doesn't do anything, not until he's turning around and cupping me around the waist and laying me down on the bed and his lips are on my neck and his hips are moving against mine and I'm curving up to him with a softly uttered "_You're changing the subject_," and he says "Shh," and unbuttons my vest.

The first time we fucked it was like this:

Breathing shaking crashing torn-apart madness, sharp streamlined arching spines, the mathematical curves and arcs of interlocked bodies, gasps and cries and crumbling weight. You have no idea how long I'd waited for this. Eames shows up at my door out of nowhere with no provocation whatsoever (this is not entirely true, I may or may not have placed an incriminating phone call with him the previous evening, but I'd had too much to drink and how the hell was I to know he was going to take me seriously?) with nothing but a rose (which he doesn't know I still have, dried and tucked away in a drawer) and before I can even say anything he comes in and presses himself to me and kisses me with that perfect mouth of his, oh god the door is still open, I have neighbors—

Let them be jealous, he says, but we make it to the bedroom and shatter our nicely built-up preconceptions of each other, that we don't get along, that after that one freak period of my life where I wandered around looking like a die-hard fan of The Clash I was this straight-laced passionless control freak, which, okay, I am, but not when Eames is here stripping my clothes off and biting the skin between my neck and my shoulder, it's enough to make me lose it, but we're still standing, he's holding my wrists tight in his hands, holding my arms straight down behind me, and he makes it around to my collarbone and I can't hold it in anymore and I say something like oh my god Eames please just fuck me.

Patience is a virtue, darling, he says like a perfect cold bastard, and he gets to his knees and takes my trousers down with him.

This is like then, but in slow motion. Everything's calmer, calculated, relaxed, but all the same notes, the same composition. Eames knows so well how to touch me, and it seems like he knew immediately. It was almost scary, the way he could intuit every point on my body and what to do to it. Now it's a series of games: how long will I wait? how slowly can he unravel me? how far can he push me before I give in? The approach is familiar, but he savors it now, takes his time instead of devouring ravenously, and either way I am completely at his mercy.

He presses his mouth to my neck and he growls, a sound that would be hilarious if it didn't make me moan and arch up against him, my fingers scratching at his shirt. Somehow, even though I am invariably better- and over-dressed, I always seem to be the first one naked.

Remember the first time? The way my knees actually buckled because you were sucking me off and I had nothing to lean against, and you let me go so gently and caught me, trembling in your arms, and you actually picked me up and laid me down on my bed. The way I lunged up at you suddenly and flipped you onto your back, I had you so well-fooled then (but no one can ever fool you twice), and you let me have the upper hand for a little while, even enjoyed it, let me undress you and let me think I was in control until you had me where you wanted me, and how that's when you caught me helplessly in your hands, held me down and oh god please yes don't stop jesus fucking christ Eames oh my god yes thank you thank you thank you.

Eames is working on getting me to that point now, achingly slow, which is wonderful except sometimes if he doesn't work fast enough I can't stop thinking.

This is where I ruin it:

"If you think you're getting off that easy, you're deluded," I say with some effort (he's working his mouth slowly from my chest to my stomach).

He pauses and his eyes look up at me from down there, before lifting his mouth enough to say, "I wasn't aware I was the one getting off just now."

"Stop it," I say, and suddenly I don't want to do this anymore; I roll off the bed and pull my trousers back on. "You know I've got more research to do. You can let me find out what you don't want me to find out the hard way, or you can just tell me."

He looks a little bruised, and I feel a little bad about it—there's a resentful ache where I didn't let Eames finish, and I know that while he's just trying transparently to divert my attention, there was also genuine feeling in it. I worry that I've killed the mood for good that evening, and I sit back down, keeping my back to him.

"Whatever it is it can't be that bad," I say reasonably. "What, did you kill someone? I'll be honest with you, I've kinda figured for a while that you—"

"No—look, it's nothing, all right?" He gets up and goes into the adjoining bathroom to wash his face, and continues talking from in there. "Just some people I had some passing connections with years ago, and I'd rather not get mixed up in all that again. I've moved on and this is sort of an unwelcome reminder."

I don't believe him; there's more in it than that, more in his reaction to Archy and Archy's to him. But I don't know what to say. Whatever this is, he's all over the place about it.

Eames stops in the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror, and he's thinking about himself, about the lies he tells himself and everyone, the lies he literally wears every time he steps into a dream, and he's thinking about how if there is one fucker he does not want Arthur mixed up with, it's Johnny fucking two-timing wildman Quid. Johnny Quid is dangerous and Johnny Quid always seems to know what's going on around him. He's amazed Archy made it this far apparently without detection.

I lie on my back and wait for Eames to decide he wants to come back or say something else, and I watch the very edge of his reflection in the sliver of mirror that I can see through the open door.

It's about a year ago that we fucked with all that mad, frightening passion, and we come down slowly and he holds me and starts laughing a breathless, tired, happy laugh.

"What?" I murmur.

"Nothing," he says, and somehow, somehow he means it. "Nothing."

"Eames?" I say quietly, and I'm not sure he's heard me until he comes out of the bathroom, toweling his face lightly and not looking at me.

"We don't have to take this job."

Eames looks at me then. Eames knows something I don't, which is this: Eames knows this is the best option, just let it go, pretend it never happened, let me break it off and tell Archy some bullshit story about we're sorry, something bigger's come up with a previously booked client, go back to being Eames the forger Eames with no past and no need to explain it. But Eames isn't just Eames anymore, he's somebody else that he hasn't thought about in a long time, and that somebody has some questions that are getting pretty hard to ignore. So:

"No, we should," he lies. "Don't mind me. It'll be fine."

I sit up, and nod. "Okay."

For a minute we don't do anything.

"Come here," I say.

And he does: he climbs back over me and kisses me long and deep, arms curling around me tightly, and he's Mr. Romantic until I reach down the front of his trousers and he smirks against my mouth and says something muffled like "So it's like that, is it."

"You bet," I say, and I push him backwards and climb over him. This time, goddammit, he's going to the be the first naked one.

When he is done laughing about nothing after that first time, which lasted I don't know how long, an eternity in dreaming, we lie there and gaze up at the ceiling.

"I've been thinking," he says, "for the past fifteen minutes, about something I've been thinking about for around a year now."

"Oh yeah?" I prop myself up on my elbow and grin stupidly at him. In all the gin joints of all my relationships in all the world, never have I felt so stupid, and so pleased with myself. "You know you're really sexy at this angle?"

He tilts his head toward me and smirks. "I wish you could see your hair right now."

"You're changing the subject," I say. "What have you been thinking about, Mr. Eames?"

"I've been thinking about going into private practice," he says. "You know, instead of being a lone wolf, which is bullshit and gets you jobs only with your friends. Forgers have never done well going into business for themselves, of course, so I'd need a partner." He looks at me expectantly.

This isn't quite what I'm expecting, so I hesitate for a few moments. "Oh," I say.

"I've sparked your interest, I can see," he says.

I swat the side of his head lightly and he grabs my wrist like a fucking ninja and pulls me to him and kisses me. "Say yes," he murmurs.

"I have to think about it," I say. "Look, seriously, Eames. I'm not an extractor. If we went into our own practice we'd need an extractor."

"Oh, bollocks," he says. "You've been in this long enough, you can pull it off."

"I'm not a _great_ extractor," I say. "People looking for freelancers are going to want the best in the business."

"Fine, so that's me, and you're a perfectionist, so we're on our way," he says. "What's the trouble?"

I'm unable to look convinced, so he leans closer and whispers, "Look, Arthur, I should just tell you now, I'm not going anywhere. So you may as well get used to me and I may as well bring some bread to the table, yeah?"

"What, you wanna go to New England and get married now?" I say, and he's winning me over, charming, winning bastard.

"Well, after that affair one of us is probably pregnant," he says, and I don't know why because it's a horrendous joke, but that's what does it for me.

"Okay," I say. "Fine. Into the business of partnered freelance mediocrity we go."

"That's the spirit," he says, and he kisses me again, and that's how I end up lying awake in bed at night with him curled up asleep beside me, reading a file that doesn't mention him by any name I'd recognize.


	3. Eames and Yusuf Go Way Back

**A Note:** Hey all. I wanted to say I really appreciate everyone putting this and other fics of mine on their favorite lists, but I like reviews even more. Anyone can click on a link to favorite something—leaving a review, even if it's a short one, takes a little more time and shows that you are really reading. I'm sure any of you who also write stories can understand this. I can also assure you that writing for a vocal audience is great motivation to update. If I don't reply to individual reviews it certainly doesn't mean I don't appreciate them—I just generally prefer not to distract from the story itself, present author's note excluded of course.

That said, thanks for reading (and reviewing, if you have) and hope you enjoy this next installment.

* * *

I'm on the phone when Eames wakes up the next morning, and it's probably what wakes him, though considering it's after eleven I don't much care.

"Right," I'm saying. "No, no, I understand. Sounds like a better gig anyway." She wishes me luck and I smirk a little and say "Yeah, you too."

Eames lifts his head and watches me hang up. "Who's that?"

"Ariadne," I say. "She's engaged, though, getting a lot of offers these days."

"All grown up, eh?" he says with a sleepy smile. I'm already showered and dressed, or the temptation to rejoin him would be greater. I ignore him instead.

"So who does that leave?"

I shrug. "I really don't know. Good architects are harder and harder to come by these days, and I've exhausted our short list of options."

Eames rolls over and stretches languorously. "Wait, what about Nash?"

"_Nash_?" I turn to look at him, somewhat astonished.

"Yeah," he says innocently. "Didn't you and Cobb pull a few jobs with him back in the old days?"

I don't like thinking about Cobb, and I hesitate, only for a second. "You seriously don't know what happened to Nash?" He shrugs, and I tell him, "Sold us out to Saito back when we were doing work for Cobol Engineering. Saito turned him over to Cobol, who, I can only assume, gave him a nice place to sleep for the rest of his life."

"Jesus," says Eames. "Our Saito?"

"Kind of hard to remember he's actually a merciless corporate god sometimes, isn't it?" I busy myself with the case file, neatening it and obsessively straightening papers. "Anyway, Nash is dead, and a traitor besides. So he's out. I guess at this point we just ask around, see if anyone knows anyone. Or I guess I could do it myself, if I had to."

This gives Eames pause, which I can detect, I don't know how, with my back turned. I look at him over my shoulder and he's sitting up, frowning at me.

"What?"

"I was thinking…" he says with great care, fending off a yawn. "I was thinking I should be the dreamer."

I look at him. There's no reason for me to argue, really, and yet this is suspicious. "You were, were you?" I say.

"Yeah." He climbs off the bed and dresses himself halfway. "If you don't mind. I feel like I might be able to better replicate territory Mr. Quid might be familiar with."

I'm not sure if that's a good thing, and I'm pretty sure Eames is just trying to stay in control of the situation (he is), but I decide not to push it. "Well, fine," I say. "In that case we're going to need an architect."

"We'll get someone," he says. His eyes fall onto the file in my hands. "You read anything interesting last night?"

"Few things," I say, glancing at it. "This guy's up to his ears in everything you can imagine, lots of stuff not even on file. He used to be a total burn-out, until he went to rehab and got his act together… stop me if this is stuff you already know."

He gives me a look and makes a vague, "carry-on" sort of gesture.

"It says he was pretty reasonable until about two, three years ago, when he started getting into some really heavy shit. Couple of jobs went wrong, fucked over some people he had working with him. This group called the Wild Bunch. Know anything about them?"

Oh, Arthur. If you could only see the way he twitches at that, the way he stiffens so imperceptibly. If you could only feel the way his stomach turns over.

"A bit," he says, ruthlessly nonchalant. "You know, word-of-mouth."

"It doesn't say too much about them," I say, naïvely pressing on, flipping through pages. "Bunch of guys with stupid names—you know, street names… the three in question were One Two, Mumbles, Handsome Bob. They were pretty small-time, I guess." I look at him, searching for any signs of recognition. His face is a mask, expertly done. He shrugs.

"I guess Quid asked them to do something they couldn't quite handle," I say, skimming the page. "Not sure quite what. But afterward they split, and Quid kind of went off the deep end. Didn't bail them out." I double check the next page. "Says here one of them didn't make it."

"Didn't make it meaning what?" he asks, and there's only the faintest trace of tension in his voice.

"Meaning whoever it was out for revenge got a hold of him," I say. "Meaning they killed him."

Eames doesn't say anything for just a moment. He crosses quickly into the bathroom, and I hear him running water and washing his face before he says, "Does it say which one?"

I check again. "No," I say. "Just that one of them died and the other two haven't been heard from since." I look up toward the bathroom. "You sure you didn't know these guys?"

"Like I always say, I know every gangster in London," he says. "I'm just curious, that's all." He comes out. "I'm going to call Yusuf," he says abruptly.

This gives me a bit of a start. "What?"

"Yusuf," he says again, searching around for his phone.

"Why?" I ask. "We don't need him for this job, it's just one level."

"Maybe he knows somebody," he says, and finds his phone. He's already putting the number in on the way out the door. "An architect, I mean." And he's gone, and I sigh heavily and look at the files in the empty hope that they'll reveal something new.

Eames gets downstairs to where I can't hear him before Yusuf picks up, sounding sleepy. "Yeah?" he mutters.

"Yusuf, it's Eames," he says, pacing. "Do you know what happened to One Two and Mumbles?"

Bewildered and not quite awake yet, Yusuf can only blurt, "What?"

"Is one of them dead? I only just heard one of them is apparently dead."

"Jesus, Eames, I don't know," says Yusuf, suddenly alert. "I haven't heard anything more than you have from anyone. What's going on?"

Eames sighs. "Look, I'm in sort of a predicament."

"Everything all right?"

"Not especially," he says. "Look, I—Arthur and I have been hired to do a London job."

Yusuf pauses, because he knows London almost as well as Eames. "Anyone we know?" he asks warily.

Eames has to steel himself a bit before he can say, "Archy wants us to extract from Johnny Quid."

There's a long pause, in the very back of which Eames can hear the distant _mew_ of Yusuf's cat. Eventually, Yusuf says, "_What_?"

Eames is a nice guy, and he and Yusuf go way back. After Yusuf drove that van off the bridge, an ordeal which was at least a little traumatic, for which he was barely recognized, and which took only seven seconds (during which the rest of the team experienced hours to bond over), Eames felt it was the least he could do to treat Yusuf to several drinks and a bottle of wine in Yusuf's hotel room once the bar closed at four, by which time Eames had embellished the story to the point of Fischer throwing himself across his father's prostrate form and issuing an agonized, drawn-out "Why?"

"I think he's gay," says Eames, swaying slightly as he pours himself another glass.

"Fischer?" says Yusuf dubiously.

"Gotta be. Look at those cheekbones. He's like a girl."

"You think everyone's gay," dismisses Yusuf.

"No, I _wish_ everyone were gay; there's a difference," says Eames. "And I never thought _you_ were gay."

"Well, good," says Yusuf, grabs the wine and finishes it straight from the bottle. Eames watches him with a half-formed grin.

"Going down on that bottle isn't helping your case," he says.

"Shut it," says Yusuf, then dissolves into a giggle, tumbling backwards onto his bed. Eames stretches out on the floor and gazes up at the ceiling thoughtfully.

"What about Arthur?" he wonders aloud.

Yusuf lifts his head enough to squint down at his friend. "What _about_ Arthur?"

Eames raises himself up on his elbows. "Which team do you think he swims with?"

Yusuf feels momentarily lost, then drops his head back down with a heavy, drunken cackle. "What the hell kind of metaphor is that?" he manages to get out between uneven breaths.

"I'm bein' serious," says Eames with enough slur to make this a seriously doubt-worthy statement.

"Eames." Yusuf sits up so quickly it surprises both of them. Yusuf takes a moment to steady himself. "Eames, you clearly want to shag the boy. Just do it and find out."

"No," mutters Eames.

"Come on, not like anything you haven't done before."

"_No_," says Eames again, with an emphatic but ambiguous hand gesture.

"Why not?"

"Because I _did _that already," says Eames, and he, too, sits up, hoisting himself by the bed coverings. "I mean that's why he acts all smart with me and we pretend we hate each other, I mean, I pretend I hate him anyway because he's a prat, that's what, maybe he really _does_ hate me, I don't really know one way or the other, but he's not man enough to _tell_ me one way or the other, or talk to me ever again, so yeah, that pisses me off a little, but I mean really he's just afraid I've told someone or I'm going to tell someone because I promised not to, and I _haven't_, I didn't, I never would tell anyone, I wouldn't do that, I respect his privacy almost as much as I think he's an inconveniently beautiful bastard. But I don't kiss and tell, I don't do things like that. I wouldn't even tell you."

"Tell me what?" says Yusuf, who'd gotten lost again.

"That I shagged Arthur," says Eames. "I just told you that."

"Right," says Yusuf.

There's a moment's hesitation as they both nod to each other vaguely.

"Oh, wait," says Eames. "Shit."

"So, wait," says Yusuf slowly. "Then… Arthur is gay?"

"I don't fuckin' know," says Eames. "We were drunk. He wasn't acting like himself."

"Well, did he consent?" says Yusuf reasonably.

"Yes of _course_ he did," says Eames, and swats irritably at Yusuf's hand. "Who do you think I am?"

"You never know," says Yusuf, not taking the time to consider the irony of this statement. "Well if he went along with it, don't you think he—"

"I'm telling you, I don't know," says Eames, lying back down. "He made me swear not to tell anyone. What does that say about him?"

Yusuf shrugs. "Closet case number one," he says.

"Could be that," says Eames. "Or not necessarily. Maybe he's completely comfortable with himself, and it's _me_ he's ashamed of."

"_What_," says Yusuf with high-pitched incredulity. "Bullshit."

It is bullshit, and Eames knows it. The only person ashamed of Eames is Eames, because Eames knows that Eames is a dirty liar. The night Eames is referring to took place a good year and a half before now, and there was absolutely no shagging anywhere in it. This was the night Arthur became a stick in the mud, and Eames thinks he's wrecked his little window of opportunity. Their first job together is over and it went well, and they figure a little celebration is in order.

Eames doesn't remember much about that night, and he believes it's because he wanted so badly to remember every last detail, to frame it forever in his mind, to have it endless and perfect. What he got for his trouble was a blur, half-remembered sentences he can't be sure he didn't invent, and Arthur's smile, and, infuriatingly, the total of the tab. He remembers the darkness of the room Arthur dragged him into, remembers the deep, sexy laugh in his throat as he pushes Eames against the door and kisses him. He doesn't remember the kiss. The kiss is the black hole.

What he remembers is Arthur smoking again, this time it's a clove, sweet-smelling, poison-breathing falseness, lying to itself and to all young people that it could be better than the cigarette because of the simple superficial detail of taste. Masked cigarette, masked boy. Eames laughs.

"Don't laugh," protests Arthur, because he's been talking about something or other that seemed dreadfully important at the time, and he has miles of insecurity to hide. "I'm being serious."

"I'm not laughing at you," Eames lies. "Just for the hell of it." He reaches out and plays a little with Arthur's hair, back when it still hung in his face. "You should be serious more often, it suits you."

"Cute," says Arthur. He tilts his head back. "You know you're really sexy at this angle?"

Arthur's been trying to seduce him all night and Eames isn't having it. Eames doesn't want the bad lie. Eames wants the bad liar. Eames wants him sober and wants him knowing who he is and what he wants. Eames has never felt like this about anyone before, almost.

"Shh," he says.

"What do you want to do to me?" says Arthur, leans close, presses himself against Eames, thin, warm, lithe body, perfect little waist, Eames could fit his arm around it and hold Arthur in the crook of his elbow.

Arthur tugs at his earlobe, pinched lightly between his teeth. "What do you want?" he whispers.

Such fine little points, is Arthur. Teeth, nails, eyelashes, tapered fingers, trim waist, the fabric of his voice, the feel of his clothes tight beneath Eames's fingertips. Does he even sweat? What noises could he possibly make, with his voice so taut and controlled? Arthur is every lovely detail Eames could ever have imagined, and every lovely detail he could ever want to know.

Eames remembers gripping his shoulders, gently extracting himself, pushing him away.

"Darling boy," he says. "I would give anything to love you."

Arthur looks at him, a blank slate, marble, unmolded. Eames wants to hold him, to kiss him again. He will not.

"But you aren't who I want to know," Eames says, and this is where it happens, this is where he sets it off. "You're something else, something I don't think you understand, and something I understand too well. And for as long as you think that's acceptable, you will only be parts of a greater, unrealized whole."

Eames leaves Arthur alone, stupidly, in that little room, swallowed up in the lung-blackening pool of spiced pungent smoke.

It is after this that Arthur gives up the lie: he becomes the stick in the mud that is the true Arthur, the Arthur who is at peace with being an uptight guy in a suit. Unfortunately, with the persona also goes the seductive attitude, the wanting looks, the innuendo. With the true Arthur comes the challenge of getting Arthur to admit he likes you, and getting him to admit he's okay liking you, okay liking men, okay having any kind of sexuality at all. And sure, real Arthur doesn't want anyone to know he and Eames shared a drunken smoke-filled kiss in the back of a bar over a year ago, and Eames thinks his window is gone, thinks maybe Arthur doesn't want him anymore and it was all a missed opportunity. Their relationship becomes fraught with this unresolved sexual tension that has everyone rolling their eyes.

It's a month after the Fischer job ends before Arthur drinks a little too much and calls Eames and says "Why haven't we done it yet, you fucking douchebag?"

Of course, Yusuf can't know that's how it went down, because Eames and Yusuf go way back, and Yusuf likes thinking that he alone knows Eames's deep dark secret that he and Arthur had a drunken shag one night long before they finally got their act together. Even after it finally does happen Eames decides to let Yusuf go on keeping that nonexistent secret. Eames is nice like that.

"You said no, right?" says Yusuf. "Tell me you backed out!"

"Well…" says Eames, which is all he really has to say.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" says Yusuf so shrilly that Eames has to pull the phone away from his ear.

"Look, it's not as simple as all that," says Eames, rubbing his forehead tiredly. "This is too big. One of my best friends in the world is dead and I didn't even know. I haven't even spoken to either of them since we all split. I have to find out which of them it was."

"Oh for fuck's sake, we can figure that out in two day's time," he says. "Give me a few hours, I'll make a few calls, no problem."

"That isn't the point," says Eames, even though this is a shoddy defense and he knows it. "You know what Johnny cost me. I have to face him."

"You do realize how dangerous this is," says Yusuf. "How shit-stupid. Does Arthur understand who Johnny is, have you explained it adequately?"

It's when Eames doesn't reply that Yusuf says, "Oh my god, he doesn't know about you, does he?"

"No, and he's not going to," says Eames. "This is between me and Johnny."

"When is the job?"

Eames isn't quite sure how to respond. "Uh—"

"I'm coming. Send me the information and I'll be there to meet you."

"No, Yusuf, it's a one-level mission, it's basic stuff," protests Eames. "All we need is an architect."

"Fine; I'll bring one," says Yusuf. "I know a guy, he's decent, looking for work. But I'm coming too, whether you like it or not. I'm not going to let you be this stupid on your own. You'll fuck it all straight to hell left to your own devices, and I'm not going to be the one held accountable for losing the best forger in the damn business to historical drama."

And Eames smiles a little, because he and Yusuf go way back, back to a period when he wasn't Eames at all but a shit-scared small-time gangster named Handsome Bob, and he shows up at the door of Yusuf's apartment with nowhere else to go. Yusuf's been a successful member of the drug scene, and now he's getting out, retiring early, moving to Mombasa and getting into a brand new scene, something about dream-sharing technology, a field in dire need of crooked chemists. So he's getting out of London; and Handsome Bob needs an out, so Yusuf takes him, and he goes from Handsome to Robert to Eames in a matter of days. Funny how easy it is to unravel a man's identity like that.

"All right," he says. "I'll think of some excuse for Arthur. And you're not telling him shit, so don't get any clever ideas."

"He couldn't get Ariadne, I take it," says Yusuf conversationally.

"No," says Eames. "She's doing quite well for herself at the moment."

"Sort of a blessing in disguise, isn't it?" says Yusuf. "If she was around, she'd be in your business until she had you and Arthur spilling every last dark secret to each other."

"Don't be ridiculous," says Eames, even though he knows it's true. "Arthur hasn't got any dark secrets."

Yusuf laughs and says, "Send me what I need. I'll see you soon, Bobski."

Eames is a little bit frozen when he hangs up the phone, because it's been so very long since Eames has thought about anything at all associated with that particular name.


	4. Dreams & Mr Johnny Quid

Thanks for the lovely words, everyone. –A/N.

* * *

Tonight Eames has a dream, and in that dream is someone who is the opposite of me: a big, muscle-bound Scotsman with a lovable naïveté and brutish charms. His "name," for all intents and purposes, is One Two.

The dream starts off pretty real, pieced together from a memory. They're in a Range Rover, which is sometimes a truck, and Eames is in the passenger seat but also he's driving, so it's an American car even though he's pretty sure this is England, and somehow One Two has control of the brakes.

Eames, who is Handsome Bob right now, knows that he's about to go to jail for five years for some minor offense (in the dream it doesn't make any sense at all, but that part of it will be forgotten when he wakes), and One Two's hapless efforts to cheer him involve greasing down a pair of twin escort girls for Bob's personal pleasure.

Bob is distraught.

"All right. Well, I can that cheered you up," says One Two.

"It's not that I'm not grateful," says Bob, and right now it's like he's not Bob at all, but Eames, sitting in the back of the car, watching himself, like watching a movie. "It's just, um—" But this sentence is bound to be absurd, and he won't finish it.

"What?" presses One Two. "It's just what?"

"You wouldn't understand," says Bob.

"Come on, Bobby-boy, that's not fair," says One Two. "I'd understand anything coming from you." His rough Scottish brogue is tempered by something else, something American (or _are_ they in America?), and very briefly One Two might be Arthur, but the confusion is subtle and passing.

"Would you," says Bob, and he's Bob again, and he doesn't believe One Two, and he knows in the pit of his stomach that this won't end well.

"Bob, you're my best mate," says One Two definitively.

Fine, says Bob to himself, fuck it.

"See, I don't want the strippers, One Two," says Bob.

One Two is a little dubious (why would anyone not want strippers?), but he nods. "Okay."

"I want you."

There's the awful moment where One Two thinks it's a joke; then the car slams to a merciful violent halt, and Bob lurches forward, and suddenly One Two is outside the car screaming obscenities at him, accusing him of being both ladykiller and homo, and all Bob can think about is _I want someone to fucking touch me before I go to jail tomorrow_, and there are apologies all around, and it's all very confusing.

The transition here is blurry (transitions always are), but it sorts itself out as Bob and One Two are somehow in Bob's room, which isn't really his room, certainly not the room he had when he knew One Two, but it's like a lot of rooms, and there's a bed, and who's counting?

One Two isn't talking anymore; One Two isn't doing anything that One Two would do anymore. Instead he's helping Bob out of his shirt and kissing his chest tenderly, as Bob wraps his arms around him and pulls himself close, feeling the warmth, the smell of him. One Two's hands are hot on his skin, and One Two drops down to his knees and takes Bob in his mouth, and Bob doesn't want to lose this, Bob would give anything to keep this, this which is a falsehood. One Two is good at this, better than he should be, but it doesn't fucking matter, because now he's lying on top of Bob and rubbing hard against him and Bob writhes and moans beneath him, can't move right, can't open his eyes—

And just like that, Eames is awake. His cock is hard in his hand, and he's staring up at the ceiling, sweaty and disoriented. I'm asleep beside him, dreaming about pigeons.

"Shit," he whispers to himself. "Shit." Gingerly he gets up and sort of hobbles over to the bathroom, where he switches the shower on as cold as he can stomach and gets in. A few seconds of that and he thinks better of it, and he turns it up hot and he finishes the job his stupid, fickle subconscious started.

It's over in a matter of minutes, and he's half-assedly toweled himself off and he climbs back into bed beside me, where I turn over in my sleep and it becomes this vaguely recurring dream I have where I'm on a job but I don't seem to know any of the people in my team, and my loaded die keeps falling out of my pocket and I end up getting totally lost.

I wake up in a bad mood, and he's already up and dressed, staring moodily out the window again.

"God, I had the shittiest dreams," I mumble, rubbing my eyes.

Eames doesn't comment. Eames doesn't see having a dream about his old friend and former object of affection as traitorous or shameful. What it is, is distressing. He realizes he misses One Two more than he's cared to admit, and if One Two is gone he's not sure what he'll do.

"Ready to go?"

Eames says, "Yeah."

"And Yusuf'll meet us there, with the new guy," I say. "Right?"

"Right," says Eames.

Two hours later we're on a train, not saying much of anything. Another hour and we've reached our stop, and Yusuf is introducing us to a guy named Kent, who seems nice enough, and is a little excited to be working with us, which neither of us has any patience for. Eames never really gave me an adequate excuse for Yusuf's presence, just told me he'd be coming after that suddenly necessary phone call a few days ago, and I'm a little uncertain about the whole thing. But Yusuf has a briefcase full of questionable potions, and you never know when that'll be useful, so I shake his hand and ask him how he's been.

At some point it occurs to me that Eames and Yusuf seem to know a lot about each other, and how did I never notice that before?

The next few days are covered by a lot of waiting and reading and sketching and spying, peppered with clipped discussions and bland English food.

Point one of the job is I have to meet with Johnny Quid and set the whole operation in motion. Archy's been good enough to arrange a meeting, and Eames has, albeit reluctantly, gathered enough references to make me out to be a fresh-faced but reliable up-and-comer in the heady world of illicit business. Eames seems very uncomfortable with this whole part of the plan, and he's making me nervous, so I avoid him.

I walk with Kent to the estate, which is a run-down, nasty old place, very English but very uncared for. Kent is really excited to be playing a role—he's mostly been a behind-the-scenes guy until now, and I pray to whatever god will take me that it's not for extremely good reasons. He's supposed to be my assistant, to give me a little more clout, and while he's not supposed to speak or really do much of anything, and he's obviously the only choice for the part, I find myself painting horrible scenarios in my head where he tries to improvise and Johnny Quid ends up killing us both.

This is stupid, though, and I'm impatient when I tell Eames I'll be fine and turn my back on him without much of a goodbye.

"This is fucked," says Eames to Yusuf when we've gone. "Why couldn't we just let Archy handle this? Archy knows when he sleeps."

"Do you really want to trust Archy?" says Yusuf. "This whole job reeks, Eames. I wouldn't be surprised if Johnny's in on it."

"Stop that," says Eames. "You're supposed to make me feel better."

"No," says Yusuf. "You're doing a fine job of that on your own, Mr. Denial. I'm here to bring the cold harsh bite of reality. I'm supposed to make you feel worse."

"Oh thanks very much," mutters Eames, and paces and waits. We rented out three small hotel rooms with three small beds—he and I have to share the cramped space and it means we're not sleeping well. He feels worse and worse the more time I'm away.

I meet with Archy outside the estate, and he furtively shakes my hand.

"He's inside," says Archy. "He's pretty calm today, and he doesn't know much about who you are. You should talk a lot, don't let him ask too many questions. Do not mention Eames."

"Yeah, thanks for that," I say dryly, and he frowns and throws Kent a suspicious glance before he admits us both.

He takes us through the dim, musty place before we get to a big empty room that might have once been a dance studio, and Johnny, who's lounging in a deck chair gazing out the window. Before we can say anything, before he even turns around, he says, "You should know I don't actually _do_ drugs. I only facilitate the market." Then he turns, and he fixes two dark, penetrating eyes right on me. "I've been clean for a nice while now, and there's no sense in messing that up."

"No indeed," I tell him, and I lead Kent to him. Johnny gestures coolly to the opposite deck chair, where I sit tentatively, leaning forward. Kent stands beside me, clutching a briefcase. Archy, like a scowling English ghost, is already gone. "And I can assure you that what I've brought to you today is only a drug in the most technical of senses. While there is a substance involved, it isn't addictive, and it isn't any more harmful than a heavy dose of your average sleep medication. And that's because it's not the drug I'm selling, Mr. Quid. It's the experience." And here I give Kent a very small nod, and luckily he spots it and knows it means he should open the case. He does, and there's the PASIV device with all its wires and timers and blinking lights. Johnny eyes it without reaction. This is the first time we've done anything like this, and we're banking a lot on Archy's assurance that Johnny loves new, shiny, fancy things, and that unless Johnny is made to think he knows exactly what we're up to, we're never going to get past him. Even Eames had to agree with that.

"This device, operated by a third party, administers the sedative, to you or to a group, simultaneously," I tell him, pitch-perfect salesman voice, god I hope so. "All it does is put you to sleep. It's what happens while you're asleep that's got people talking."

Johnny looks at me, unblinking. "Who's talking?" he says. "I've never heard anything, and I hear about everything."

"And those of us in the knew generally try to keep it that way," I say smoothly. "It's not the kind of thing you want getting out and about to just anyone. There's a limited number of machines and demand would be very high if its existence was made too public. You may not realize it, Mr. Quid, but I'm doing you a great favor by showing you this."

He moves his cold, dead, shark-like eyes slowly and solidly from the machine to me and stares at me for a heavy moment, and I worry if I've stepped too far, presumed too much. He eventually speaks, even but slow, to imply that yes, I did, and I get a fair strike but don't fucking do it again.

"So why are you showing me this?" he says.

I give him a casual shrug. "Business isn't what it used to be," I say, and I feel like I'm starting to sound like Eames, which is a little reassuring, because Eames is a far, far better liar than I am. "I'm looking to move into other avenues for a while, shift the demand for this in another direction. Heard you were the man to see."

He nods a little, his face a fucking void. "What does it do?" he says eventually.

"It alters the way that you dream," I say, "and it allows you to share that dream with others, experiencing it as a physically manifest and sometimes entirely convincing reality. With practice, the memory of the dreams can become vivid, and control can be exercised. It's intoxicating, in its way."

"Group-dreaming," he says. "Sounds kind of dirty."

"Potentially," I say. "It's for anything—however you want to use it."

He's still just looking at me. "How much are you asking for it?" he says.

"You can get it for a bargain while it's still so new," I tell him. "8,000 for one machine and a healthy amount of the sedative, even to reproduce your own."

His eyes narrow a little, and I wonder if this is too high or too low.

"I'll need a demonstration," he says.

"Of course you will," I say. "I wouldn't sell without one."

He looks me up and down, judging, searching. I resist the urge to fidget. "I suppose you'll have to accompany me," he says.

"If you don't mind," I say. "It's best if I can give you some examples of method, various rules of thumb, that kind of thing."

Johnny finally turns his stare back to the device, watching it like it's hypnotizing him, or, somehow, vice versa. "How long does it take?" he says.

"In real-time?" I say, and I nod for Kent to shut the briefcase, which he does a bit clumsily. "Just five minutes."

He frowns thoughtfully at me, then he smiles and laughs to himself. I'm beginning to see what has everyone so agitated about this guy—I don't know what it is, but he's scary.

"All right," he says. "I'm game. Anything funny happens, and you should know the deal's off, and that's the least of your concerns."

"Of course," I say generously. "When were you thinking—"

"Right away," he says quickly. "Tomorrow at three."

Archy's hours off are from three to five, and he's told us specifically not to arrange it for then.

"I may not be able to make it that early," I say. "I've got a prior engagement."

He looks at me, really suspicious, and for a minute I'm terrified I'm going to have to come up with a legitimate-sounding prior engagement. "Four," he says. He's never asking, always telling me. I don't want to antagonize him more than I have to, so I look up at Kent. Kent is plainly terrified by having to actually do something, but he manages to stay with it and shake his head. Give the kid a goddamn Oscar.

Johnny scowls. He very clearly does not want Archy involved. "Five minutes?" he says.

"Just five minutes," I say.

"Fine," he says. "Five o'clock sharp. Be prompt."

"I am always prompt, Mr. Quid," I say, and I get to my feet. "I look forward to doing business with you." I offer him my hand, which he takes, turns, and kisses. I recover it, and I feel that my instinctive reaction of looking a little dismayed is still pretty in-character.

He smirks at me and waves us off, and switches his attention back to the window with mechanistic precision; it's like we're suddenly not in the room, though it feels like forever to get across it and out to the hall, where Archy's waiting to take us back out. Archy isn't pleased about the time, says something about how that's cutting it way too close, and I say something about how this is how it is and does he realize just how much Johnny doesn't seem to trust him? It's only when Kent and I clear the estate and are walking in quick silence back to the inn that I realize how much I've been sweating.


	5. What We Don't Need To Know

"Tomorrow at five," I say curtly, because when Kent and I get back, Eames and Yusuf have been drinking to steady their nerves and this just pisses me off.

"Arthur, I've been thinking," says Yusuf. "What if Johnny actually wants to buy it?"

"Jesus, I hadn't thought of that," I say, with probably more sarcasm than the question deserves. "Well, it's going to be pretty tricky for him to pull it off considering we'll be gone before he wakes up."

"What, so he can track us all down and kill us in our sleep?" says Yusuf. Yusuf is drunk. I've never seen Yusuf drunk. Yusuf drunk is not something I think I enjoy.

"From there it's on Archy to pass us off as conmen," I say impatiently. "He'll tell Johnny the approximate truth—that we were trying to extract something. He's got something he'll fill in. He wins points with the boss for getting rid of us."

"He'll probably even burn a few corpses to make it look extra convincing," mutters Eames from the corner of the dim little room, and I clench my hand into a fist to keep myself under control because suddenly I want to yell at him and I'm not sure why.

"Pretty clever," says Kent approvingly. Thank you Kent.

"Sort of," says Yusuf. "Still putting an awful lot of faith in Archy."

"Yusuf, you're not technically part of the team, so just keep it to yourself, all right?" I've had it and I want him out, and Kent too, I want to even this goddamn playing field because I can feel Eames deliberately not looking at me and I'm sick of this bullshit. "Now if you don't mind, I'm exhausted and I really don't want to talk about it with the whole gang."

Yusuf raises his hands in a peace-making, passive aggressive sort of way, and climbs to his feet. He throws Eames a look, and Eames nods without looking at him, so he goes, taking Kent with him. I wait for the door to close.

"Why is Yusuf here, again?"

Eames shrugs. "He wanted to come."

I look at him. "I don't think I like it that he knows more about you than I do."

Eames looks at me, and I can see he's at that point of drunkenness where having fun means getting a little bit mean. "Well you've seen me naked, which is something he's _never_ done, but you don't hear him complaining about it, do you?"

"Fuck you," I say, and I'm suddenly angry, really, really angry. "You think this is funny? I'm going into a job blind, Eames. Why can't you just tell me what the fuck is going on?"

Eames looks away, shifts his weight and curls his arms around himself, protective. He hates this, and seeing him this way makes me back down a bit, in spite of myself.

"I'm sorry," he says. He doesn't know what else to say, and I don't know what to do. I suddenly feel horrible for asking, and I wonder what it's like to be in his position. The anger slips, and I shrug my coat off so it crumples unceremoniously on the floor, and I sit down on the edge of the bed. He looks so small there, curled up in the corner. Eames has a strange affinity for corners.

For a while we don't say anything, and he unwinds gradually, composing himself.

"You know what drew me to you?" I say suddenly, and the question is as surprising as the sudden break of the silence, and still he manages a perfectly smartass response, barely dropping a beat.

"Other than my fashionable sensibilities and stunning good looks?" He smiles, relieved with the conversation before it's begun, and he gets up and starts leisurely undressing himself. There is nothing seductive about this, just Eames getting ready for bed, but I watch his every move even so.

"I knew you were hiding something," I say. "I always knew. From the very first time I met you I knew there was something there, some secret no one else knew about. And for a while I wanted it. I wanted to be the person you told—the person who knew what no one else knew."

He interrupts himself from the ritual undoing of buttons to laugh at me. "You're so full of shit," he says. "You were the one with the big identity crisis, and you treated me like I broke you in half when I gave you practically the exact same speech."

"Some speech," I say, and I smirk at him, the lies he tells himself, to me, to whoever will listen. Maybe he doesn't know he's telling them. "You said you couldn't love me because you didn't like who I was. How was I supposed to react?"

"Well, I was hoping for something less pathologically insane," he says.

"Look, I'm trying to tell you something."

"Fine, fine; go ahead."

I sigh heavily, but it's all for show: we're playing each other like we always do, and it's familiar and reassuring and it feels good. "My point is that I did get to know you, and I guess at some point I realized that I didn't want your big damn secret anymore. You know? I was content with what you were willing to give me." I slip my shoes off and ease myself down onto my back. The bed creaks a little, and he's watching me in the mirror. "And that's okay, because I like you as you are, Eames."

He smiles. "Careful, you're in danger of sounding almost sweet."

I look at him, eyebrows raised. "I can be sweet."

He turns to me, shedding his shirt onto the floor to join my coat. "Oh, right. And I can be Princess Diana."

I pause a moment to see if he's going to take this to its logical conclusion, but he doesn't, so I do it for him. "You _could_ be Princess Diana."

He looks at me with surprise, as if the thought had never occurred to him and it never should have occurred to me. "Well that'd just be crass," he says. Shirt, belt, shoes gone, he comes and sits down beside me. His fingers begin playing gently in my hair, liberating it in unsightly wisps. "Anyway, you were saying."

"Just that…" I murmur, looking past him to the water-stained ceiling. "I'm trying very hard not to care about all this. I don't want to feel like I need you to tell me what happened in your past, if you don't want to tell me. It shouldn't matter. Because I trust you, and because the only thing I care about is you."

"Aww," he says with a big stupid grin.

"I'm being serious," I say, and swat at his hand. He catches me instead around the back of my neck, and tilts me up a little, leaning down over me, the angle should be awkward but he makes it work, manipulates everything so gently that it works.

"I know, Arthur. You always are. And I appreciate it," he says softly. "But right now I'm very tired and a little drunk, and you have somehow managed to look exquisite even in this awful light, and I would do literally anything to delay the advent of tomorrow-at-five. So bearing that in mind, do you suppose we could just forego the talking, and the being serious, just this one time, and just be here, in this shitty little room, on this dreadful mattress, together?"

God, he's beautiful. He's beautiful and he's perfect. I think about the night I got so drunk I called him and yelled at him for not having had sex with me yet. I don't remember anything of what he said, if he could get a word in edgewise, and I barely remember anything I said, just that it was a confusing blend of accusations of having left me hanging and apologies for having let him believe the absurd illusion that I didn't desire/want/need him with every stupid little fiber of my stupid little being. I remember drinking alone in my apartment and trying not very hard to watch _American Beauty_ on AMC, and Kevin Spacey wrapping it up with that line about every-single-moment-of-my-stupid-little-life making me realize all these things. I remember that all I could think about the whole movie through was Eames, his fingertips, his lips pressing against every part of my undeserving body.

"That's acceptable," I say, breathless because he's there now, maneuvering me with such care and grace further onto the bed and leaning his weight down over me, kissing me. I wrap my arms around him and hold on for dear life, dear stupid little life, and his hands are on my hips, holding me down even as I start to squirm beneath him. He moves to my neck, kisses it once and comes to a rest, tilting his head to one side. He comes to a slow drift, his hands loosening, and I shift away from him so I can look at him properly.

"You got sad," I say quietly, running my fingers over the hair above his ear.

"No, no," he murmurs. "Just… a little nostalgic." He gazes at the wall for a while. "Thinking about things I'd rather forget."

I don't know what to say to that, and after a moment I say the only thing I can think of, which, perhaps weirdly, is "_Non, je ne regrette rien_."

He rolls over and looks up at me. "Your French is abysmal."

"Well it can't be any worse than your English," I say reasonably.

"Hey." He punches me lightly in the arm, and I laugh a little, an empty, dying sound, because now it's my turn to gaze at the wall, resting my head on his chest. His heartbeat is loud and steady and his voice reverberates when he says, "You're thinking about Cobb, aren't you." When I don't respond he says, "Edith Piaf was his idea, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," I say without thinking. "No. Mal's. It was Mal's idea."

He strokes my hair a few times before I lift myself up and look at him. "I just feel like… I should have done something, you know? I shouldn't have let it happen. Ariadne blames me for it, a little bit. I know she does, even if she doesn't think she does. I was there with him the whole time, I should have seen it coming."

In all our time together this is something we've never talked about. Cobb is something none of us talk about. "There was nothing you could have done," he says. "There was nothing anyone could do."

"That's not true," I say, and I sit up suddenly. "There's always something someone can do. Always."

See, Cobb never came back. We got Saito barely enough, with a lot of therapy and a lot of time he was Saito again, but Cobb isn't Cobb anymore, and this is something we don't talk about.

"Arthur," he whispers, and he runs a hand over my cheek and only then to I feel the sudden and alarming urge to cry. I don't cry, and I'm not sure what it is that has made me want to. I manage not to, but I think he sees that it almost happened, he who sees everything. He sits up and he kisses me again, hand buried in my hair, his other arm tight around my waist. Take me away, Eames. Take everything away. Take away the bad friendship, the long-suffering denial, the cold hard refusal to trust Ariadne's alarmist attitudes. Take away the false hopes as you wait in Yusuf's rain soaked dream. Take away the insecurity at knowing there's so much you don't know about him, the painfully embarrassing memory of what you were trying to be when he first laid eyes on you, and take away the loneliness of wondering if you'll ever know his first name.

He squeezes me hard and holds me down and I imagine Kent can hear us through the wall but I don't care, I don't care because he is mine, I know him and I know who he is, and he lies to everyone but he doesn't lie to me, to me it's just that I don't need to know.

It's when he's inside me and his hands are on me hard enough to bruise that he shatters everything by saying with the faintest of coherence, "Arthur, I want to tell you."

"Shut up," I whisper.

Is it because I know he doesn't want to tell me that I don't want to know? Or is it because I'm afraid that knowing will change him and change us?

He can't say anything because that's when he comes, and I can only gasp in return, arching, my spine curving up under me.

He collapses beside me and we breathe.

"I want to tell you," he tries to finish, silenced again by my fingertips pressed against his lips, eager and imperfect protection against this knowledge.

Gently he takes my hand and pulls it away. "I want to tell you that I love you," he says.

He has never said this to me; we _don't_ say this, not for any real reason, just like it never occurred to us to say. I don't know how to respond and, ridiculously, I say, "Oh."

"I do," he says. "I love you, Arthur."

_I love you, too._

_I love you, Eames?_

Nothing sounds right.

I settle for Han Solo.

"I know," I say.

"Arsehole," he laughs, but he's too tired to argue, and he's asleep, mercifully dreamless, saving up that energy for the dream that is to be Johnny Quid's, tomorrow at five.


	6. Tomorrow At Five

Tomorrow at five starts now.

Okay, so, the plan is this: Johnny and I go under first, with Kent initiating the sequence. Archy will be hanging around to let Eames in discreetly and to oversee the business from there; Kent puts Eames under a few seconds after us. I take Johnny through the ropes of dream-sharing with as much bullshit as I can muster while Eames roams his subconscious in disguise. He and Kent have evidently put a lot of work into making it look very much like Johnny's real London neighborhood, which is a place I guess Eames knows pretty well, well enough to get at where Johnny might be hiding something. I'll be doing my best to ply Johnny for information on my end, which no one is very confident will get us anything. Eames and I wake up before Johnny, and Kent administers an extra sedative, provided conveniently by Yusuf, which promises to keep Johnny under even after we take him off the machine. We get the fuck out, Archy cleans up.

No one says much of anything on the way to the estate. Yusuf's hanging around in the extremely incongruous Samoan pub up the road, drinking and thinking to himself that we're all about to die.

What-the-fuck-ever.

The London Eames knows is squalid, is what I learn immediately. The thing I can't get over about this technology, even after using it for so long, is the heightened sensory experience it gives you. I never smelled anything in my dreams before I started dicking around in subconscious crime; now I wish that were still the case. This place is fucking rank.

It's a few minutes before I spot Eames—I can see we've successfully impressed upon Archy the great importance of having Eames positioned literal seconds away from being hooked up, to avoid too much of a ridiculous time lapse—and I recognize him right away. Eames used to be able to pull one over on me, got a lot of mileage out of being someone I don't know, but I've gotten better at it with time. And this is Eames, this dark, beautiful girl in a little black dress balancing perfectly in a pair of red-soled Louboutins.

I think this is about where you came in.

We make eye contact, and it's dangerous for me to talk to him, but I have to—because the job's barely even _started_ yet and already we have an enormous problem.

"I can't find him," I whisper, not looking at him/her directly, furiously scanning the teeming crowd of East Enders for our man.

"What the fuck do you _mean_ you can't find him?" she says, doing the same thing, nimbly lifting a cigarette from the pack that has suddenly appeared in my pocket. More audibly, she says, "Got a light?"

"Stop that," I say even as I discover the lighter in my pocket and fulfill the request. She takes a long drag, I think just to torture me, and blows some of it in my face. "I mean I can't find him. I mean he is not _here_, all right?"

"For Christ's sake, Arthur," she says through her teeth, risking a sharp glance at me. "How does that happen? _Does_ that happen?"

There is no precedent, that I know of, for actually losing the mark. Not that we've lost him—"lost" implies that I had him in the first place. The moment I became aware of being here Johnny was already gone, had already disappeared somewhere in the crowd.

"What do we do?" I ask, and this is uncharacteristic of me, asking Eames for directions, but this is a situation where I think he might actually know better than me.

She takes another drag, another puff of smoke flutters, unfurling, past my head. "Don't do anything," she says, gazing beyond me. We're starting to get looks, those horrible, paralytic, probing looks. "Knowing him, he'll want to do this on his own. He probably doesn't trust you and he wants to play around for himself. He doesn't like listening to lectures or taking orders." She drops the cigarette, but doesn't stamp it out, not with those shoes. "This may turn out to be a good thing. If I can find him, so much the better. But you keep looking, all right?" She looks at me again, and offers the flicker of a familiar smile, a strange little glimpse of Eames. "Don't panic yet, darling."

I give her a withering look, and I leave, aborting the conversation—like clockwork, the projections go back about their business, leaving us in the clear to do ours. I wander hopelessly, wondering how the hell this happened while at the same time finding myself not all that surprised. I already felt on edge, like we were walking into a trap, and now here we are: Johnny doesn't even know the terrain and he somehow managed to get the upper hand anyway. I think about Yusuf, sitting in that pub thinking about how fucked we are, and I wish he'd shut up about it, because we aren't fucked, ladies and gentlemen; not yet.

Eames knows where he's going: Eames doesn't expect it's the same place Johnny would have gone, but it's where he wants to go, right now, right here in this fucked-up living, breathing monster of a flashback.

When she walks into The Speeler some heads turn—not the radar-sharp stares of projections in revolt, just the wandering eyes of some ostensibly sex-starved men in a bar.

She looks around and is completely unsurprised to see some familiar faces. She doesn't see himself, though, Handsome Bob. He doesn't seem to be in this one, and it's just as well. She doesn't see One Two, either, and all the better for that, too.

What she does see, not right away, but once he's in her sight she can't take her eyes anywhere else, is Bachelor Number Three, the man she knew as Mumbles.

Mumbles stands alone in the corner by the window, staring out it. It catches her not just because it's Mumbles, but because it's something she doesn't expect from him, or from this carbon copy of him.

She shouldn't, but what the hell. She's here, and isn't this why she came? She approaches.

"Mumbles," she says, and he gives an enormous and surprising start and stares at her with a slack-faced expression of pure shock. She doesn't know what to do, so she smiles, she hopes a little flirtatiously, because what other reason could she as this girl have for talking to him, even though the whole idea makes her a little uncomfortable.

His response, however, is just as bizarre as his initial reaction.

"What the hell did you just call me?" he says in a hushed voice, like he can't believe it.

She hesitates. Is Johnny's impression of Mumbles this skewed? "Aren't you Mumbles?" she says cautiously.

He frowns and glances around in agitation, like someone might be listening in. The projections mind their business.

"Do I know you?" he asks.

"No," says Eames, taken aback. "I just—"

"You're not—" He looks at her hard, looks into her eyes. "You're not like them. You're not a projection, are you?" His eyes narrow. "Who are you?"

For several long moments, Eames is completely frozen. All he can think at first is _What?_

After that all he can think, and he hates himself a little for this, is _Oh my god, please, no_.

He will never forgive himself for this reaction, this horrible, awful reflex fed by the part of him that is still, stupidly, unforgivably attracted to One Two—that would wish the death upon one of the best friends he has ever had if only it meant he got to see One Two again, for one more stupid awkward unfulfilling conversation about nothing.

When finally she can speak again, she finds the power to say, "Mumbles? It… it's really you?"

"Cut it out with that Mumbles shit, will you?" he says, looking around again. "Nobody calls me Mumbles anymore."

And this is where the relief happens: grief is pushed aside and Eames realizes he misses Mumbles more than he could have guessed.

"You—you're alive!" She has to resist the urge to throw her arms around him then, but her smile unnerves him just as much.

"Never felt better," he says dubiously. "And who are you, exactly?"

"It's me!" she says, stupidly, because what the hell is that going to mean? "It's—" She lowers her voice to a surreptitious register. "…Handsome Bob."

Mumbles isn't sure how to respond to this, as he looks her up and down in resolute disbelief. "…Handsome… No way." He peers at her closely, unabashedly. It's not just that he doesn't believe it; he doesn't _want_ to believe it. "_Bob_?" He looks her up and down, ranging from incredulity to mild disgust. "My god, you—you, uh—" His hand fills in the words that aren't coming, gesturing ineffectually at what he takes to be the new and improved Handsome Bobette.

Eames/Bob realizes the misunderstanding and blurts, "Wh—no!" The situation would be funny if it wasn't so typical of the friendship he'd had with both of them. Skirting around the complications he plunges in for a quick explanation: "No, no. I'm a forger, I—"

This, at long last, about three minutes after it would have hit anyone else, is where it occurs to him that wait a minute, what the fuck is going on?

"Wait, what the hell are you doing here?" she says.

Mumbles has already latched onto the salient piece of revealed information. "A forger? You mean you got into extraction too?"

Eames feels that this is slightly unfair, that a person should only be subjected to so many enormously shocking pieces of information in one go without being allowed a sit-down. "You're—" she says blankly. Devoid of anything else to say, she finally leaves it at "What?"

Mumbles shrugs. "I'm an extractor now, Bobby-boy. First business I could get myself into after we all went our own ways. You too, eh? Handsome Bob the Handsome Forger? What are the odds of that?"

"I—" says Eames, still feeling miles behind the game. "Sort of. I go by the family name now."

"Get out!" says Mumbles, and Eames wonders how he can keep getting more and more pleased by the situation that is really just disrupting his sense of natural order. "You're _that_ Eames, aren't you!"

Even in his flustered state, Eames can't help but take a little pride in that, and especially in the satisfaction of one of his old friends, friends from the days of stupid clumsy uncomplicated Bob, knowing him as the vastly superior being he is now. "Suppose I am."

Mumbles is delighted, and it's unspeakably confusing seeing him like this. It feels unfamiliar and familiar all at once. "I never would have guessed it!" he says. And finally the million dollar question, which Eames should have asked five minutes ago: "So what're you doing in young Johnny?"

Eames feels this is in rather bad taste, Mumbles taking this so lightly, when it goes beyond coincidence, them meeting here in the mind of Johnny Quid, Johnny who isn't young anymore and arguably never was. "Archy hired me," she says cautiously.

"Me too," says Mumbles. "Said he had some other chaps on the job and we'd be working autonomously, just to make sure. Said I didn't know 'em, but he's still a big liar, in't he?" The way he grins puts Eames off, reeling as everything starts to unravel.

"You don't think he knew?" she asks.

"Knew what, mate?"

Eames feels her voice rising, feels the eyes of the people who aren't people at all. "Knew everything!" she says impatiently. "Knew where to find us, knew what business we'd got ourselves into. Brought us all together and got us into Johnny's head. You reckon?"

She's turning Cockney again. Turning back into Handsome Bob. Disguise within a disguise, all coming apart with the truest form dragged out into the open. Focus, girl.

"Can't say," says Mumbles, infuriatingly unconcerned. Where distance from the Wild Bunch has only increased some of Eames's neuroses, it appears to have calmed Mumbles down. "Who else is with you?" he asks.

"No one Johnny knows," says Eames. "If anyone's being targeted here, it's us." And this is where he cannot go any further without asking. "What about you? Is… I heard One Two was—"

And it is Mumbles who kills One Two, puts the final nail in his terrible coffin, when his face changes and he shakes his head grimly. "Sorry, mate," he says. "Didn't realize you didn't know… you have been pretty cut off, haven't you?" Eames can't speak, so Mumbles continues, shifting his weight. "One Two never made it out of London. When Johnny's little bomb of a job went off, it took him with. We were the lucky ones." He hesitates, then, "Sorry," as gently as he can. "I know what he meant to you."

Eames doesn't want to talk about this anymore. Suddenly he finds himself back on track, gunning more than ever to take Johnny the fuck down.

"It's… I'm all right," she says. "I'm not alone these days anyway."

Mumbles is quick to brighten. "Oh no? So who are you with then?"

"No one you know," says Eames evasively; for some reason she doesn't want to talk about me. "Least I don't think so."

"Wouldn't be the same no-one-Johnny-knows, would it?"

Eames looks at him. "Yeah," she says. "Look. Let's stop fucking about here. We both came here on business and I'm about ninety percent certain this is a huge fuck-off trap. We need to decide what to do, and we need to take this prick down, once and for all."

One Two is dead. She can't really deal with this information. Fucking hell, she can't.

"Right, all right," he says, a little surprised, a little excited. "Let's get on that, for certain. Somewhere else, though—projections are getting suspicious. Gives me the willies."

Eames can only nod and follow Mumbles out into the street they used to walk together, follow him to a different building, an empty room. What used to be Bob's flat.

"Why here?" she murmurs.

"Closest," he says, picking the lock. "Come on."

That's all well and good for Eames. Eames feels like he's getting somewhere, at the high cost of learning which of his friends is dead; at least he thinks he knows something about what's going on. Good for Eames.

I, on the other hand, am getting increasingly frustrated and increasingly lost. Our clock is ticking down and we don't even know where the fuck our mark is. At this point it's just embarrassing.

And this is when I spot Eames again. Not Eames the girl, but Eames.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I say urgently as I get near him. "Why'd you drop character? What if he sees you?"

And he looks at me, and I realize, belatedly, this guy is way younger, this guy has different hair, this guy isn't dressed anything like Eames dresses. This guy is a wanderer of the streets, he makes his living through petty criminal endeavors, dresses like a regular person, bears no lovely, cultivated affectations, is barebones and all-natural; most of all, he's not real. He blinks at me, unfamiliar, unassuming—I haven't raised any alarm bells, but dangerously, terrifyingly all the same, I am talking to Johnny Quid's subconscious.

"Sorry, I'm not sure we've met," he says. "I'm Bob." And he holds out a hand.

Oh my god.

"Bob," I say. I stare at his hand. "Your name is Robert."

He snorts. "Well fuck, if you're my mum, maybe," he says. "Everybody calls me Bob. Or Handsome Bob. Maybe you know me better that way?"

Handsome—_fuck_.

Handsome fucking Wild Bunch Bob.

Arthur, you complete idiot.

"Robert Eames," is all I can say, because it actually _tastes_ good, somehow, saying it makes him like a real person even though he's off somewhere else pretending to be a fake person who doesn't look anything like a Robert _or_ an Eames, and this handsome lovely disturbingly-same person in front of me, frowning at me with that same mouth, is actually nothing at all.

"Was there something you wanted?" he says.

I stare at him. He's always been beautiful. Handsome Bob suits him.

"Sorry," I say quietly. Finally I take his hand, which is still hanging there, limp and confused. "I'm Arthur."

Bob's flat looks like he left it, as it ought to.

Mumbles goes again to the window.

"So what're you thinking?" he says. "You're saying he's run off somewhere… and Archy's in on the whole game, right?"

"We don't know that, I suppose," says Eames, and he drops character because what's the point, now? Mumbles catches sight of him and looks at him in amazement.

"That's insane," he says. "I've never worked with a forger before, only heard about it. Brilliant stuff, mate. You're looking well, by the way."

Eames can't hear any of this. "If Archy _is_ in on this," he says slowly, "why get us inside Johnny's head? Why not just spring this on us up above?"

Maybe it's saying _up above_ that clicks something else into place here—whatever it is, Eames suddenly lifts his head and says, "Wait a minute. How'd they even hook you up? You would have had to see us all asleep there—wouldn't you have known—"

Mumbles isn't listening, looking out the window. "Say, is that your mate down there? Pretty, Oxford-lookin' bloke, talkin' you up?"

This description, Eames knows, is almost certainly me; impatiently, Eames says, "Talking me—wait, what?"

Mumbles glances back at him and points out the window. "Your projection's down there, charming the pants off some kid." He looks back out. "Looks like he's just as good at it as you were, too."

"What?" Eames rushes to the window, every other discrepancy forgotten. And there I am, talking to Bob. Bob is obviously flirting; I look completely disoriented. Eames didn't even _think_ about the possibility of this. How could he not have thought of this? "Shit. Shit fucking shit. I can't believe I didn't—" He stops short because Bob is reaching forward to whisper something in my ear, and for reasons I don't entirely understand at this moment in time, I turn my head and I kiss him.

For several seconds Eames stands there watching us and gives himself a fair chance to react to this. There is, however, no immediately suitable reaction that volunteers itself. So he turns to leave. "Mumbles, I have to—"

Eames isn't quite sure what has happened until he gathers that he is pinned against the wall, an arm across his throat, a surprisingly strong body pressed against his.

"Like I said, mate," says Mumbles, sneering, an expression Eames has never ever seen on him. "No one calls me Mumbles."

And that is probably, Eames realizes, because he isn't Mumbles at all.

Johnny grins at him. "Handsome Bob," he says proudly, like he's talking to a protégé.

Once again, making this probably a record number of instances Eames has been caught off guard in so small an amount of time, Eames is completely without a coherent response. He settles, pretty understandably, for outright panic. "What the _f_—"

"You really thought I'd gone stupid, didn't you?" says Johnny coldly, pressing his arm harder against Eames's throat, cutting him off. "Did you actually think I wouldn't _know_ about this business? Think you're the only forger in town?" He smirks, a scary, all-too-familiar face, and loosens his grip a little and gives Eames a condescending pat on the cheek. "Well, you've got another think coming, Bobby-boy."

And this, for those of you not following this in a tactically-minded manner, is where we are officially, old-school, Real-RocknRolla proper-fucked.


	7. The Exacerbation

As of right now there are five things Eames has to worry about, and one thing he doesn't.

First is how this turn of events affects the alleged death of one of his friends. Was Johnny telling the truth about One Two or just guessing? The possibility of One Two being alive is wonderful—the torture of getting Mumbles back and having him snatched away again makes it even more complicated than it already was.

Second is, Johnny knows everything. Johnny knew what we were up to from minute one, the moment I stupidly, _stupidly_ went ahead with our stupid, stupid plan and showed him the PASIV device; Johnny knew to prepare a disguise and play us at our own game, and the lucky fucker just happened to go as someone Eames _knew_ and _trusted_. Or, and Eames knows he cannot rule this out, Archy was in on it from the start and Johnny was expecting him. But of course even if that isn't the case Eames has just very gracefully outed Archy's involvement in the matter, which means Archy's fucked, and we're fucked doubly.

Third, Johnny knows who _I_ am.

Fourth, I am at present completely unaware of this development and also getting inexplicably busy with someone which he can only assume I know full well is Johnny Quid's subconscious reflection of who he used to be.

Fifth is probably something about poor Kent playing the sitting duck upstairs, but Eames's heart is never in business and he's somewhat irresponsibly mostly concerned about one and four.

Sixth is Johnny's arm against his throat, the rest of Johnny pressing against him, way too close, way too strong, and Eames wonders in the back of his mind if he could take Johnny in a fight but Johnny is still Johnny Quid, which means when he talks, people tend to shut the fuck up and listen.

Johnny is saying: "So: bit of a crossroads, then! Where do we go from here, I wonder? Hmm." He makes a big show of considering it, then snaps his fingers and says, "I've got it. A little trip down memory lane. I know you and your inept bunch of unrulies were always three steps out of the loop, but is there a chance, do you think, that you remember the significance of this?" And here he reaches into a pocket with his free hand, and withdraws a pencil.

Eames stares at it. The sixth thing on Eames's list is now shifting to yes, he _did_ hear about that time where supposedly-dead former-rocker tiny skinny half-starved junkie Johnny Quid stabbed an enormous fuck-off bouncer within an inch of his life with a blunt wooden pencil, and there it is in Johnny's hand.

Johnny nods knowingly, and eases off Eames a little, in the interest of conversation. "Curious thing, dreaming. When I first went into it I thought there'd be this whole stipulation about dying in the Matrix means you die in real life and all, but as it turns out, just a handy wake-up call. So if you're in this to hurt, it's gotta be something relatively nonlethal, don't it?" He smiles, and it's a little detached and a lot terrifying. "And this whole personal object concept, what do you call it, the totem? Very nice. So I think, _this_ is personal. And it doesn't kill people, Pretty Bob. But it fucking hurts."

Johnny is drifting. Eames is afraid to breathe, like being under the eye of a predator.

"Lenny stabbed me with a pencil once," says Johnny a little dreamily, his gaze wandering for just a moment, back in a flash as he is tight upon Eames once more. "He was an horrible old sod and I have you and your friends to thank for getting him out of my life. Don't think I've forgotten that."

Eames is thinking, maybe if I don't move, he will go into a Bond villain monologue and I can make my daring escape.

Johnny is doing no such things, his eyes nowhere but Eames. "But you've become a bit of a problem, Bobby-boy. Snooping about in my brain and all. Not very polite."

Eames can feel the dull lead point of the pencil brush along the skin of his throat.

"Tell me what Archy is after," says Johnny, whimsy gone, filled up with dark, frightening Zen resolve.

The thing Eames doesn't have to worry about, although he doesn't know it just now, is the fourth thing, because when I draw away from the kiss I'm still trying to get my head around, my stomach lurches down like when you're at the top of a rollercoaster about to go over the edge, and then my whole body seizes up in the myoclonic seizure, tripping over something when you're just about asleep.

I'm awake.

It's about as disorienting as you might expect, followed immediately thereupon by the coarse demand of "And just who the fuck are you?"

I blink up into the face of some guy I don't know, some guy with a thick accent and a big, intimidating shape. He is straddling my chair, which he has tipped completely onto its back, and he's gripping my shoulders.

"What—" I blurt gracelessly, and I look around myself. Eames and Johnny are asleep beside me, the machine still humming. Kent is gone. Archy is gone. Both Kent and Archy left me alone with this huge angry stranger.

"I asked you a question, mate," he says, and lifts me up out of the chair and places me unceremoniously on my feet. I'm still not quite balanced, and it's ironically fortunate that he's got my collar in his fist, as it becomes the only thing holding me up.

"Who are you?" I ask, overwhelmed by the situation.

This is the wrong thing to say.

He grunts heavily and hits me in the face, and just like that I am on the floor. I am a fairly capable fighter, but he has the element of extreme surprise, and he is built like the roughest brawler I've ever had to go up against, so the odds are stacked slightly against me. This is my defense when I say I am pretty useless when he drags me up to my feet, gets both my arms behind me and basically manhandles me down a long corridor, away from Eames and Johnny.

"Wait, wait!" I say, struggling to get a hand free. "There's some kind of mistake. I was giving Mr. Quid a demonstration—"

"Save it," he growls. "Do you think I'm stupid or something?"

Okay, fine. "What did you do with Kent?"

"That little poof who was in there with you?" he says with a laugh. "Told him to fuck off, he fucked right off. You need some better friends, mate."

So Kent is okay. Kent is okay and Kent knows where Yusuf is, and Yusuf is miles more competent, and that, at least, is something.

But that is the extent of the knowledge I gain, because then I'm on the floor again, this time in a small, windowless room which seems, really terrifyingly, to be some kind of holding cell.

I scramble to my feet and actually land a good punch on this guy's chin, but he nails me right back and sends me sprawling again, and the door slams and the lock clicks into place. I stare at it for a moment, gingerly massaging my jaw, checking my lip for blood, and a quick glance around reassures me that I am not going anywhere.

My new friend is, though: he hurries back down the corridor into the room he's just dragged me from, where he takes a moment to survey the setup dubiously, before carefully sitting down in my chair. He picks up the needle and regards it with great suspicion before slipping it, wincing, into his arm.

Johnny sniffs. Eames stands against the wall where Johnny has left him, untouched for the time being, watching Johnny's every move stiffly. Eames hasn't answered any questions and Johnny hasn't followed through on the threat of pencil-violence, but knowing Johnny that could come at literally any moment.

"This procedure is lasting longer than five minutes," he says, "isn't it?"

Eames finally finds his voice and says, "It is five minutes. In real time." This is not true. He and I arranged it to last longer just to be sure, and when Johnny turns to him and grins he knows Johnny has figured that out.

"Liar," he says. "Better at it than your friend, but still not good enough."

Eames is doing everything he can to hold himself together. "Look," he says. "Archy wanted us in here because he was concerned for your wellbeing. It's not about betrayal."

Johnny gives a short, barking laugh. "Bollocks," he says. "Stop treating me like I'm stupid, Bob."

"Stop calling me that," says Eames quietly.

Johnny looks at him placidly. He fingers his pencil. "So how long are we stuck here for?" he asks. He turns to the window and looks out, frowning thoughtfully. "Or should we just shoot ourselves and get it over with?"

Eames doesn't answer. Eames is watching Johnny as he looks out the window, down towards where I was.

"Your friend appears to have fucked off," he says.

He's trying to draw Eames out. Eames resists.

Johnny smiles vacantly, still gazing out. "I want you to know I am sorry, Bob," he says. "About what happened. I never meant for the job to go like it did. But you gotta understand, I've been pulling myself up by me own bootstraps since Lenny went, and sacrifices have to be made here and there. Can't make an omelet and all that." He smiles a little wider, Eames sees it in the reflection of the window pane, and he ducks his head down, fingering the pencil. "But it looks like what's gone is gone."

Eames isn't quite sure what is happening, but he knows it's insane. He is pretty sure he just jumped Johnny Quid from behind and slammed him as hard as he could in the back of the head with a Louboutin, but now he's a man again and he's running the fuck away from the building, so who the hell knows? Jesus Christ Jesus Christ. Where the fuck is Arthur?

Yeah, where the fuck _am _I?

"Shit," he says to himself. "Shit!"

And then, from behind him, because half a dozen totally unfair mind-blowing surprises apparently isn't enough for one dream: "Bob?"

He stops. He turns. He sees, and he refuses to believe.

"How the fuck did you follow me down that fast?" he snaps, ready to use the next object he can conjure as another bludgeon, even though Johnny is apparently made of iron.

One Two, however, just looks modestly bewildered. "I'm sorry?" he says.

Eames isn't ready to give into it, not twice in a row. "Come the fuck on, Johnny," he says. "This is just in bad taste."

One Two is now looking a little concerned. "Why… d'ye think I'm Johnny?" he says. He looks around. "Is this supposed to be a dream? Are you just confused about who I am, like what happens in dreams? Is that it?" He looks back at Eames. "I don't really know how this works," he says apologetically.

Eames doesn't know what to do. For a moment he just stares. Then, tiredly, afraid to give in to the incredible relief fighting its way to the surface, he says, "One Two?"

One Two looks pleased. "That's right," he says. "Though we should be careful, Johnny is somewhere around here, I think."

"One Two, what the fuck," says Eames, and because he didn't do it with Mumbles, and it's just as well because it _wasn't_ Mumbles, but he finds himself regretting it anyway, he steps forward and has himself a hug. One Two is immediately uncomfortable: it's One Two, all right.

"You, uh… you all right?" he says, patting Eames's back awkwardly.

"Thought you were dead," murmurs Eames.

One Two manages to extricate himself. "Well, Christ, Bobby-boy, I thought _you_ were dead," he says. "Where've you been all this time? You couldn't have dropped a line, or anything?"

"I've been busy," says Eames. "Look, what are you doing here? Johnny's seriously fucked us over, this is not a good place to be."

"I was curious," says One Two. "Never been inside one of these before. So could I fly, if I thought about it hard enough?"

Eames rubs the bridge of his nose. This is not happening. "That's not how it works," he says. "Look, I'm serious about this, okay? Where did you come from?"

One Two doesn't have a really adequate response for this, so he shrugs and evades it with practiced ineptitude. "Look, I just saw you were hooked up with Johnny and some random prick, and I thought—"

"That random prick is my partner," says Eames. "We are trying to do a job. Archy hired us to extract from Johnny, you _do_ know what that means, don't you?"

One Two has been frozen since the word "partner," but Eames is distracted watching for Johnny and misses it entirely. "Uh—" he says. "Sort of. Archy hired you?"

"Yes," says Eames impatiently. "Only it's not going particularly well on account of Johnny has _done_ dream-sharing before and knows what the hell he's doing and what the hell we're trying to do. So I'm starting to think Archy fucked us over, or if he didn't, he's going to kill us. Unless of course Johnny kills us first."

One Two is frowning and nodding as if he understands, which Eames is pretty sure he doesn't (which he doesn't). "So, this partner of yours," he says. "You trust him?"

Eames sighs irritably. "Yes, of _course_ I trust him, One Two," he says. "I've been working with him for years. I'm in love him."

If he was being completely honest with himself, he'd know that he added this last bit in a strange, subconscious effort to make One Two jealous. If One Two was being completely honest with himself, he'd admit that strangely, subconsciously, it worked.

"I see," says One Two. "Of course you are."

Eames gives him a look, and neither of them know exactly how to proceed. One Two is not used to this Bob, when the Bob he knew was so comparatively quiet and easygoing, so willing to follow and be led. Eames isn't sure he's used to it either.

"I thought he was one of Johnny's mates," he says.

Eames narrows his eyes. "What are you talking about?" he says. "How did you even—"

This, however, is as far as he gets, because he blinks and One Two is gone.

Justice is pretty sweet, is what I would think to myself if I was aware that at this moment, One Two's chair has been hurled to the side and he's sprawling on the floor, awake and deeply confused, and the first thing he hears is "And what the bloody hell do you think you're doing?"

One Two turns over and gapes up from the floor, his all-too-brief handle on the situation now completely gone. "Yusuf—!"

Yusuf has no patience for bullshit reunions. Kent burst into the pub saying something frantic about a crazed Scotsman threatening him with grievous bodily harm, and Yusuf was pretty sure he knew who it was, and now that he sees he's right, he is not fucking around. "Where's Arthur?"

"I—" says One Two, stopping himself short when he figures out Arthur = I'm in love with him = some random prick, and then, wanting to avoid this line of discussion as much as possible, gestures unhelpfully to Eames and says "You should wake him, things aren't going smoothly. If he and Johnny wake up at the same time you're in it."

"_You're_ in it if I don't get some fucking answers," says Yusuf threateningly, and One Two has never seen Yusuf this way, and he's beginning to realize that once again he is in way over his head. "Tell me where Arthur is."

"I—I don't know any Arthur," says One Two in a barely-concealed panic. "Look, you've gotta wake Bob up, or this is going to get ugly very fast."

"Oh for fuck's—you better not have screwed this all up, mate," says Yusuf wrathfully, checking the counter on the machine. Eames is due to wake up momentarily, Johnny shortly after. Everything's going according to plan, except everything.

"Hey, I'm doin' you a favor!" protests One Two, getting to his feet. "I can cover with the boss, just get out of here."

"The—" Yusuf turns on him and stares in wide-eyed, open judgment. "Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me."

Eames chooses this moment to come to. He sits up straight, faster than one usually does upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, and Yusuf helps him up with a hand on his arm.

"How'd it go?" he asks, hoping for something, anything divergent from what One Two's been on about.

"Pear-shaped," says Eames curtly. "Johnny's a forger. A fucking forger. Completely pulled the wool over."

"Fantastic," says Yusuf, and he sets about detaching Johnny from the machine, bringing the countdown to mere minutes before the extra sedative wears off. "You know One Two's working for him now? Also, Arthur's missing."

Whatever Eames has had to put up with for the past relative ten minutes, this is going too far. "What?" He rounds on One Two, who flinches and looks as guilty as sin. "Where is he? Where the fuck is he?"

One Two is saved, however, by the belated return of Archy, who cuts through the developing chaos with "What the hell is going on here?" Everyone turns to look at him, and he glares back reproachfully and says, "I leave for five minutes and it's like a bomb went off."

"Archy," says Eames, turning and storming up to him. "Did you set us up? Is that what this is?"

Archy, to his great credit, is taken aback. "I don't—what are you talking about?" He turns his sharp stare on One Two. "One Two, what the fuck are you doing here?"

Eames has had it. He grabs Archy by the shoulders and actually shakes him a little. "I'm talking about Johnny Quid your _boss_ being a fucking _forger_, you fucking twat! As in _in_ on the business! As in _knows_ what you just tried to do!"

In any other universe this assault would have warranted the famous Archy slap; but in this case Eames has been pretty openly wronged and he is mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore, so Archy just stands there and absorbs this somewhat unwillingly. "…Well, that's just grand," he says with long-suffering resignation.

"I'll say it's grand," says Eames, the fury showing no signs of slowing down. "And fuck you for not telling me about One Two, as well."

"Eames, we haven't got time," says Yusuf, a nervous eye on Johnny. "We've gotta go, now."

Eames waves Yusuf off and points accusingly at One Two. "Look, he's done something with Arthur," he says.

"Eames, come on!" Yusuf is pulling his arm now, and Eames allows himself to be pulled away from Archy, who is staring at him unblinkingly, and away from One Two, who is watching the ordeal and cringing noticeably.

"You find Arthur," says Eames threateningly. "Find him!"

Yusuf pulls him out into the hallway and they're off, Yusuf telling Eames repeatedly to just shut up and walk as fast as he can without running or hitting something.

There is a decent pause while Archy looks passively at the space Eames and Yusuf used to inhabit, and One Two looks at the floor. He feels Archy's gaze slowly turn onto him, but he doesn't move, not even as Archy approaches him with slow, even steps. Finally, when Archy has stopped within arm's length, he chances looking up.

Archy backhands him so hard his head turns completely to one side, the slap echoing throughout the big room. One Two grunts heavily, but doesn't argue; Archy was not moving on with the day without getting to slap someone, and One Two knew he was probably the best candidate.

"Fix this," says Archy, dangerously serious.

"I don't know h—" begins the put-upon One Two, but he flinches as Archy takes another threatening step forward.

"Fuck your don't know how," snarls Archy. "Fix it!"

"Ahh…" says Johnny from behind them, and they turn and watch him stretching languorously. "Nothing like shooting meself in the head to get out of a nice catnap." He sits up and looks at them. "Well hello, Uncle Archy."

There is a moment of frozen panic from both Archy and One Two, broken by Archy stepping forward with a quickly uttered, "Look, Johnny, I can explain—"

"Explain and I'll cut your balls off," says Johnny, getting to his feet. "Bring them to me and we'll call it even."

At this, Archy looks at One Two. He doesn't know what One Two did with me, or why he did it, but at this point he doesn't care if it means they have something to pacify Johnny. One Two, to his credit, was about ready to avoid mentioning me at all and wait for the opportune moment to set me free; however this doesn't really count for much as Archy gives him a look that could injure a man and he crumples under the pressure.

"We've, uh…" he says, fidgeting. "We've already got one of them, in the back room."

Johnny brightens. "Oh, jolly good. I feel like a bit of fun. Take me to him." He turns on Archy, switching off the good mood like a light. "You. Your balls are on the line, and if you don't want the rest of your vessel not to mention career to join them in about point-five seconds, you get out of my sight and deliver me some fucking mind-raping thieves." He pulls back and offers Archy a cold little smile. "Shoulda known you'd always go Brutus on me, Arch. Where's the trust? If there's something you want to know that badly, I'll always just tell you."

Archy isn't sure what to do here, and he's about as fucked as he possibly can be, so he decides to just go for it. "…Are you planning something I don't know about?"

"Archyyy." Johnny laughs and pats Archy on the back. "I'm always planning something you don't know about. Show some initiative, you might just get in on it this time." And he pulls away and makes a light swatting gesture, waiting patiently. "Go on, then. Be a good boy. Scarper."

Archy hesitates, glaring at Johnny, glaring at One Two, glaring at the situation. Archy is fucked. Archy does not approve of being fucked. It is not in his nature and he doesn't know what he's going to do about it, but it's going to be good. At some point.

He stalks off, leaving One Two alone with Johnny. Johnny holds out a hand, inviting One Two to lead the way, which One Two does, begrudgingly. He is pretty sure Bob is going to kill him.

"Nice to see an old face, in't it, One Two?" says Johnny. "I can only assume you let him get off Scot-free because, well. You gotta have your principles, right?"

One Two hates working for Johnny. It's a long story, and he is at present composing various speeches in his head for how to tell it to Eames, how to best explain how he got into this situation, because he has to admit that at this point, yeah, it looks pretty bad.

"You ever been inside a dream before, One Two?" says Johnny, strolling along casually behind him.

"No, sir."

"Don't 'sir' me, you thick Scotch bastard," says Johnny. "You know what it's like gettin' people wandering around inside your subconscious? It's a violation, that's what. Someday I'm sure you'll understand."

Mercifully for One Two, they reach the room where I am being kept, where I have been making a solid effort to pick the lock with a piece of wire for the past several minutes. I hear them outside and freeze in place, perhaps stupidly. This is what I hear:

"Look, don't hurt him too much, all right? He seems important to Bob."

"Important to Bob, is he? Shoulda thought of that before you knocked him out and dragged him into my playroom, eh, big guy?"

A pause, during which I can only assume the big one (what is that, Irish? Eames can never let go about my bad ear for accents) is realizing yeah, maybe he should have thought about that. Fucker.

"Run along now, Mr. Two," is what Johnny says next. And, terrifyingly pleasant, he says, "Be grateful I'm in a good mood today!"

There's a little pause while "Mr. Two" gets busy leaving me in the hands of a psychotic man who somehow seems to have gained the upper hand. I do not think about maybe getting away from the door, which opens inward—I'm frozen wondering what the hell has happened to Eames.

The door opens with a sharp crack, and I am thrown back onto the floor, muffled curses and blood trickling out from under my hand, and I look up and there's Johnny standing over me, just smiling and smiling. Behind him the door swings heavily shut with a resounding, dooming thud.

He takes off his stupid sunglasses, folds them and slips them neatly into an interior pocket. "Hi," he says.


	8. Explanations Great & Small

**A/N:** Many apologies for the inordinate delay in getting this up. Those of you worried that I might ever discontinue this need not worry—I always finish the pieces I start. It may start coming a little slower, but it'll get there, I promise. Thank you for understanding.

* * *

"So, Mr. Doyle," he says. "Only that isn't your name, is it? Archy fed me an whole entrée of horseshit over you, didn't he?"

I can't move. I'm lying on the floor like an idiot, gingerly making sure my nose isn't broken, and he's just pacing around slowly like a skinny deadly predator.

"So what's your real name, then?" he asks, and he squats down to get a better look at me. "You look like an Arthur. Are you an Arthur?"

I don't know how the fuck he's gotten there because I'm not thinking straight, but my face twitches and gives me away.

"You know, I think there's an Arthur what works with the famous Mr. Eames," he says cheerfully. "I was just having the craziest dream about him. And you were there." He smiles at me. "Say. I'll bet you're _that_ Arthur, aren't you. Lots of rumors about you two an' all. 'Course Eames didn't look like himself then, but neither did I. You know how dreams are."

I cannot even process this. For a panicked moment I think Eames has actually betrayed me; but this is shortly swallowed up in logic and anger. "What did you do to him?" I snarl, and his hand latches around my throat and he stands up with me and pushes me away. I stagger and stand there and stare reproachfully.

"He turned tail and ran," he says. "Had better things to do that seek you out, I guess."

I know what he's doing here and I'm not going to let him do it. I don't say anything.

"So I imagine, you being as pretty as you are," he says, strolling around me, looking me up and down, "that you two are a right happy couple. Am I right? You don't seem Bob's type, but I guess people do change after all, don't they."

"Look," I say, but there is really nothing for me to tell him. "What do you want?"

He smiles. It's creepy. "Nothing," he says. "Nothing you can give me, anyway." He slinks closer and I hold my ground, right up until he's in my face, breathing me. "But if I know old Bob, and the way Bob was acting about you, I reckon you mean something to him. And I reckon he's not gonna just let you suffer in here, will he?"

Maybe it's the panic, but I actually laugh. "I'm _bait_ now?" I say. "You have got to be kidding me."

His fist jams into my stomach and I can't breathe, and my knees hit the floor and I'm gasping and choking.

"Believe it, princess," he says from above. "And enjoy it while you can. As of right now it's the only thing keeping you alive."

So by now I'm getting an inkling that Johnny maybe knows something about dream-sharing, maybe played us at our own game in there and that's why I'm in this handbasket. And as much as I hate being here, as much as I'm convinced I'm about to have a really incredibly unpleasant experience, I know he's right: Eames is not about to take this lying down, to the point where I don't really understand how Johnny thinks he'll still come out on top if Eames bursts in with guns blazing. It's that, that and Johnny's self-assured grin as he watches me attempt to recover some semblance of dignity that convinces me he is either completely insane, or he has something else going on.

Fortunately, Eames is pretty smart, and this is one of the things he's working on as he paces our room at the inn like a caged wild animal.

Yusuf is sitting on the bed, and has been trying unsuccessfully to calm him the hell down.

"Eames, calm the hell down," he says wearily for about the eighth time in as many minutes.

"You fucking calm down!" he says.

"I am calm. I'm just sitting here," says Yusuf. "What more do you want?"

"Of course you are," says Eames furiously. "This isn't your responsibility, you're barely even involved. You weren't being unbelievably stupid inside, you didn't let this happen. This isn't your staggeringly stupid fault."

"For the love of Christ, get a hold of yourself," says Yusuf, stands up, takes him by the shoulders and gives him a good shake. "You are no good to Arthur or anyone like this. Do you think he'd be losing his mind if your positions were reversed?"

Eames pushes Yusuf away and turns to the wall. "They wouldn't be reversed," he says. "Arthur would never have let this happen."

"Eames, it's hardly your fault," says Yusuf. "You couldn't have known. No one could ever have guessed about One Two."

Eames knocks the lamp off the table and Yusuf takes this as a cue to shut up for a few minutes.

Yusuf is rescued from having to discuss this any further by a knock on the door. Eames either hasn't heard it or has no intention of answering it, so Yusuf goes to open it, because he thinks it's Kent, because who else would it be?

Kent is sleeping the experience off in his room, and it's One Two.

"Speak of the devil," says Yusuf and stands back and folds his arms.

One Two ignores Yusuf and looks across the room at Eames, who's turned to stare at him expressionlessly.

"Bob," he says sheepishly. "Can I come in?"

Eames doesn't speak, beckoning once. Yusuf closes the door behind One Two and turns to watch, because he knows this is probably gonna be real good.

Nothing is said for a few moments. One Two takes a shuffling step closer, and Eames might seem speechless, but One Two was never good with words and Eames is the first to talk.

"What the fuck," he says.

"Look, Bob, I know this is—it looks wrong," says One Two.

"You're bloody well right it does!" says Eames, taking such a violent step forward and One Two flinches and puts his hands up protectively.

"Just—just calm down, all right?" says One Two a little irritably. "Let me fuckin' explain."

Eames wants to punch him so badly that it takes him a few moments to realize he has actually punched him.

"What the fuck yourself!" says One Two, picking himself up.

"So fuckin' explain," says Eames, and he's rarin' to go, ready to knock his old friend through the wall if he can manage it. "Tell me to calm down again, go on. Traitorous bastard."

"Steady the fuck on," says One Two angrily, and the explosion is imminent, which is what makes Yusuf a real man for getting between them.

"Eames," says Yusuf sternly. "While I don't necessarily not support this, I think we can all agree it is not the most productive use of our presently limited time."

Eames shuts up and turns to breathe heavily at the wall, because he knows Yusuf is right. One Two shuts up and sullenly massages his jaw because Yusuf used a double negative and it confused him.

"All right?" says Yusuf. "Everybody play nice now. I'll be right over here." And he goes back to the bed and sits down, wishing more than anything that this was a nice hotel where he could ring for a cup of tea without suffering the judgment of the already agitated staff.

Eames continues to face the wall. One Two wants to talk, but caught in the dilemma of finding the right opening statement Eames beats him to it once again.

"I was so happy to find you alive," he says. "You have no idea how worried I was."

One Two nods. "Yeah," he says. "Same here."

Eames turns around. "I've really missed you, One Two."

One Two nods again, uncomfortable as ever with the sharing of emotions but not wanting to ruin this lovely moment.

This, again, is something Eames is happy to do for him. "And yet already you have fucked things up so completely that I'm starting to forget why."

One Two swallows all his dignity and pride, like he's been getting good at lately. "I know," he says. "Just let me explain, Bob."

"Stop calling me Bob," says Eames through his teeth.

"Okay," says One Two, and he sighs. "Things got… complicated after we all split. You and Mumbles disappeared, there were all these rumors that one of you was dead—"

"Right, and correct me if I'm wrong, but we were afforded that shitstorm _because_ a certain man who is _now your boss_ refused us the help he _owed_ us," says Eames. "Isn't that how it went?"

"_Yes_," says One Two impatiently. "But you and Mumbles got out, and I wasn't so lucky, all right? And then he turned around and offered me the job. Said it was by way of apology. I tried to tell him it was too late for that and I wasn't interested, but I didn't have much of a choice, did I? It was the only way I could keep under the radar until things cooled off, and by then I had steady pay, and have you ever tried telling Johnny you want to _stop_ doing something for him? I never thought it would all go up in flames like this, I can tell you that."

Eames absorbs all this somewhat unwillingly, arms folded tight across his chest, but eventually he nods. "Do you know for a fact that Mumbles got out?" he says.

One Two looks surprised by the question, and he hesitates before answering. "Well, no," he says. "I always kind of assumed."

"My understanding was one of you was dead," says Eames.

"Where'd you hear that?"

"Read it," says Eames, and defaults back to pacing. "It was in the background files Arthur dug up. Didn't specify who."

"Well Christ, Bo—uh, Eames, that could've meant you for all we know," says One Two. "I mean you did disappear and change your name."

"Didn't change it," says Eames. "I started using it."

One Two doesn't know what to say to that, and Eames is making him nervous, so he turns to Yusuf. "Okay, well, now I'm open to suggestions. Johnny doesn't know I followed you and I reckon I've got about twenty minutes tops before he notices."

"Don't be ridiculous," says Eames. "I'm sure he's having a fine time getting carried away with my partner. Won't even notice the time going."

"Look, I _am_ sorry about that," says One Two. "It just seemed—"

"I don't want to hear about it," says Eames, turning sharply. "You're going to take us back there and we're going to get Arthur out and fuck off. You can come with us or take your chances here, it doesn't much matter to me."

"And we're dealing with Johnny how…?" ventures Yusuf, thinking of that nice cup of tea.

"We'll shoot him in the head if we have to," says Eames, and both One Two and Yusuf kind of want to laugh at the absurdity of such a suggestion, but Eames isn't fucking around and both of them choke it back.

Luckily, the voice of reason comes to their rescue. "Oh I wouldn't recommend that," says Archy, stepping in and closing the door. One Two and Eames both completely lose their composure and recoil in graceless surprise, leaving Archy to smirk disapprovingly at them (this was an expression Archy had been working on for some time, and he'd gotten it down to a pretty good science). Yusuf sighs audibly.

"Oh jolly good, the whole gang's here," he says.

Archy raises an eyebrow at him. Yusuf is unimpressed.

"I remember you," says Archy. "Used to sell drugs up in Whitechapel, didn't you?"

"And elsewhere as well," mutters Yusuf, thoroughly uninterested in going into this.

"Well; what a lucky thing Johnny doesn't know _you're_ here," says Archy. "Now, I can tell you all right off there'll be no shooting Mr. Quid in the head, as it wouldn't end well for any of you and it might well not kill him even if you managed it. Run and fetch that spineless toff you brought with you, this concerns him too."

"Yes, well, what's _your _fantastic plan, then?" says Yusuf, standing up and turning to face the intruder. "And it better not involve feeding us to Johnny as retribution for fucking up utterly."

"Actually it does," says Archy. "But that is not the full extent of it, so shut the fuck up and listen."

"So let me get this straight," I'm saying, mostly to distract myself, mostly to keep up the increasingly weak illusion that I'm still pretty confident that I'm going to come out of this okay, "not only are you already deep in this business, but you're a forger as well. Is that what I'm to understand?"

"Sure," says Johnny. "If you like."

In the time it's taken me to figure this out, because Johnny's unconcern for the whole situation means he's pretty open to answering questions, Johnny has managed to suspend me about two inches off the floor, hanging by my wrists from some kind of fucking pulley system he's got rigged up. My feet can touch the floor, but only enough to sort of scramble around in a pathetic circle with an extremely insignificant maximum radius, which I haven't done, mostly to avoid looking stupid, as if this is a real concern right now. I would have thought I could take him out before anything like this happened, but this fucker is fast. All it took was a knee to my sternum and I was pretty much locked in. Now he's strolling around taking his time while the blood drains from my arms.

"So why'd you let us go in?" I ask, desperate to keep him talking.

Johnny shrugs. "I like to live dangerously," he says. "And I was pretty curious who set this whole thing up. Archy was my second guess, you know. Should have been my first. He's the only one who really fits the bill—there's plenty of people who could get you in and out and might have a reason to, but only Archy is both smart enough and stupid enough to actually pull it off. Poor Uncle Archy." He smiles. I find myself wishing he'd put his sunglasses back on.

And as if all this wasn't bad enough, it turns out Johnny Quid sings.

"But if you think there's something else / Well you're right; there is / There's something else." This with a stupid kind of soft-shoe towards me, and the effect is nightmarish. "But if you think I'm gonna tell you / Think again; why should I even think of tellin' you what there is? / Yeah, 'cause silence is knowledge and knowledge is power." He stops within reach of me and smiles up at me. He drops the tune and says apologetically, "Listen up, I just work here."

"_Reservoir Dogs_ called, they want their gimmick back," is the first thing out of my smartass mouth, and I don't have any time to think about how ungodly stupid a thing to say it is, because that's when he stabs me.


	9. Act Four

"You know what's funny," he whispers into my ear, which is fortunately still attached to me in spite of my idiot mouth. I'm hanging by a thread, still by my wrists technically, and there's blood soaking through my nice fucking shirt, all of the wounds infuriatingly minor and they still hurt like a bitch and I'm having trouble staying focused. "What's funny is how I'm using old methods of extraction on a modern extractor. Nothing like the classics, eh?" He smirks to himself. "Not that I'm extracting anything, of course."

And he isn't. He hasn't asked me any questions. This is torture for the hell of it.

"Yeah, that's hilarious," I mutter.

"Well, it's ironic, isn't it?" he says. His fingers wander up the spidery trail that has made its way down my arm onto my chest, like a river on a map, colored all in red. He looks at it, and at me, and I wish he wouldn't.

"Doing all right?" he asks with an insufferable façade of politeness.

"Oh yeah, just dandy," I say.

He looks at me a moment longer before winding an arm around my waist and leaning in a lot closer than I am comfortable with.

"Don't be like that," he says.

"What are you doing," I say, trying to lean away from him in my limited radius without hurting myself further. This is impossible.

"Listen," he says. "Your friends will be here soon. And this room, well, I'm afraid it just isn't fit for company. But I gotta have something to show for it. I hope you don't mind."

My blood is smeared on his clothes now. Eames is going to kill him.

"Eames is going to kill you," I tell him.

Johnny cocks his head back, making a big show of thinking about it. "No," he says. "All things considered, I don't think he will."

I wonder who knows Eames better; Johnny or me.

Johnny's breath is hot on my neck now.

"I can see what he likes about you," he murmurs, whispery and hypnotic.

"Get the fuck away from me," I say, knowing he won't, and I can't _believe_ I am actually in this situation now.

Johnny doesn't do any such thing, instead keeping one arm wrapped tight around my waist, the other brushing against the line of my trousers, threatening to reach in. He glances up at me and slowly bites down between my neck and my shoulder. I flinch and he does reach in, and I'm frozen because I don't know what to do, because I'm afraid of him. He rubs at me, smirking against my skin, and I am wondering how much of myself I can pull together because he's _right there_, his guard is down, if I can just fucking—

The sudden knock on the door saves what is left of my dignity, saves me from having to do something incredibly stupid. Johnny laughs at me softly, licks at me once, and drifts away. I am hanging there, numb and angry, cold with sweat.

He opens the door with a flourish, and behind it is some enormous guy with an assault rifle. This just gets better and better.

Johnny converses with Assault Rifle for a few seconds in low tones, then turns to me.

"Your friends have arrived," he says cheerfully. "Excuse me for a moment, can't keep them waiting. Don't worry, I'll be back soon."

He slips his sunglasses back on, smiles with a mouth full of teeth and goes, locking the door behind him, and I don't know what has happened or what Eames is planning, but the way he throws a smirk at his looming henchman makes me very worried about it.

But Eames _isn't_ planning anything, and he doesn't like that. He and Kent are here solely on the assurance that Archy still carries enough weight with Johnny that he'll be able to both keep them from any real harm and maintain enough control of the situation that they're going to come out on top, which Eames is doubting more and more as this situation progresses. He didn't have much of a solution otherwise and he wasn't about to just sit around and wait for Johnny to kill me, but Archy is the only one of them who's presently armed and there are about eight ways this could go straight to hell.

And the first thing that throws him is, just as Johnny calculated, the blood all over his shirt as he strolls in alone. Eames's whole body tightens at the sight of it, and from behind him Archy sees it and he mutters, "Steady, boy, steady." Eames swallows the reflexive desire to jab his elbow into Archy's sternum.

"Welcome to my humble abode," says Johnny. "You're a little late to the party, but they do always say that's better than never."

"Whose blood is that, Johnny?" says Eames in the calmest voice he can muster, which, on account of how ragingly apocalyptically furious he is, is pretty fucking calm.

"Oh, this?" Johnny looks down at himself in exaggerated surprise. "Yes, I'm very sorry about that, I didn't have time to change." He looks up at Eames and he smiles thinly. "Don't you recognize it?" he says.

Eames starts walking, and Archy pushes past Kent in a really valiant effort to tackle him before he gets there, but Eames shoves him back off, and Johnny actually lets him get about a foot away before he lowers his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose.

There's a shot, and Eames flinches, which is understandable, Archy flinches, which is stupid, and Kent flinches, because he's never been shot before and he doesn't quite know it's happened at first. Somewhere between the strangled yell and hitting the floor he figures it out.

Eames turns around sharply and Archy is sort of frozen in place, staring at the writhing mess on the floor beside him. He looks up at Eames with an expression he seems to hope is impenetrable.

Johnny steps up next to Eames and actually dares to put a hand on his shoulder. "Now, that was a warning shot," he says. "You behave yourself or it'll get worse."

Eames doesn't want to move, as if taking any steps back bring him further away from me, but Archy can't afford to break character any more than he already has and someone has to attend to Kent, so Eames gives in and rushes back and kneels down over the crumpled architect. He'll live, but he won't enjoy it for the next several hours: he's been shot through the shoulder, fucking painful but he's all right as long as nothing else happens to him. And that of course is exactly Johnny's point.

Eames strips down to his undershirt and gingerly dresses the wound as best he can, muttering things like "You're gonna be all right" while Kent manages amazingly to pull himself together and stare reproachfully at Archy, and over all this, Johnny is saying "So here's how it's gonna be. You don't want to get your architect shot and I don't want to incapacitate him any more than I have to. This room is surrounded by gunmen and they're ready to do whatever needs doing. So let's all cooperate and everybody'll get what he wants. How's that sound to everyone?"

Eames stands up, helping Kent to his feet. "I need some assurance that Arthur is all right," he says.

"You have it on my honor that he is perfectly fine," says Johnny.

"Perhaps we should just show him, Johnny," suggests Archy in his best diplomatic voice.

Johnny glances at Archy. "Oh, Archy," he says. "Sorry, I forgot you were standing there. You can go wait in the antechamber, this doesn't much concern you. I'll deal with you in a moment."

Archy stands still for a moment, not sure what to do. It is everything Eames can do not to look slowly at him.

"What do you mean?" says Archy, smiling like this is a joke. "Johnny, I went to all this trouble to get them here, let's get down to business."

"I can't agree more," says Johnny. "But the business I have with them is no longer the business I have with you, if you get what I'm saying. And I'm not really inviting you to wait, Arch. I'm telling you. All right?"

Still, Archy does not move. "Johnny—" he says with some effort.

Enormous Man With Assault Rifle appears out of the corridor behind him and strikes him heavily on the back of the head with the butt of the weapon. Archy goes down, and while Eames knows he's more fucked than ever, he can't help but enjoy watching, just a little.

Johnny steps closer to Archy. "Archy," he says. "You gotta understand. I had high hopes for you. You've been good to me a long time. But that time is ending. How can I ever trust you again, Archy, when this whole thing was set in motion by you?" He reaches Archy and squats down, looking him in the eye. Even does him the honor of taking off his shades. "You wanted to know if I was planning something," he says. "Something big."

Archy doesn't say anything.

"Well, I am," says Johnny. "And wouldn't you know it, your clever efforts to get at what it might be have only helped me along. But I don't like the way you did it, Archy. And I'm not stupid, and I know that as soon as my back was turned you'd stab something else deep into it. And so, let's just call it quits while we're ahead, shall we?"

Archy opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Johnny smiles and stands back up. Assault Rifle pulls Archy up onto his knees. Kent is gripping Eames's arm now, Eames isn't sure from his own torment or from the conviction that they're about to witness an execution, but Eames can only watch the situation unfold, just as the dread and _oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck_ unfolds in his stomach.

"It's almost Shakespearean, in't it," says Johnny thoughtfully. "You, practically my uncle an' all. Killed my dad, tried to take over my empire. And now you get your comeuppance, don't you?"

"You didn't seem to mind my offing your father at the time, Johnny," says Archy coldly.

"Well of course I didn't; I'm making a bloody metaphor, you prat," says Johnny. "You get the whole Hamlet thing, right? Me the eponymous Prince, you Claudius, yeah?" He sighs and abruptly he turns away. "Never mind. Too highbrow for you, Uncle Arch." With a dismissive wave he says "Take him to the waiting room. Rosencrantz, Guildenstern. Come along."

It takes Eames and Kent a moment to figure out Johnny is referring to them. Archy is yanked back up to his feet, promptly frisked and unceremoniously shuffled out of the room, looking over his shoulder at Eames with an expression that actually is impenetrable, unintentionally this time. Johnny turns around and beckons for them to follow.

"Let's go," he says. "I've got a proposition for you. Concerns the Fortinbras of our little fable. Play along and you just may come out all right."

There isn't anything else they can do, so they follow him, Eames supporting Kent's weight as he hobbles along. Eames throws a wary glance at the direction in which Archy has been dragged, knowing the significance of it, able to guess at just how fucked they are right now.

However, in making this assessment, there are two factors Eames has not taken into account: The first is that Archy is at least _somewhat_ competent in the matter of getting people where he wants them; the second is that Yusuf is not stupid, nor does he make a habit of taking anything remotely resembling an unnecessary risk. Eames knows Archy has instructed Yusuf how to get in the building undetected—an outer door which is routinely unguarded. In the average break-in, this point of entry offers not much assistance, being that it leads into a locked room, which is why Yusuf was A) safe there and B) going to wait until One Two showed up to let him loose upon the building. If Yusuf had any particular problems with the plan (and he did, starting with part B onward), they paled in comparison to his reaction when he heard the lock turning and it wasn't One Two. One good thing about Archy is he manages to keep his head even in the worst of times, prompting him to talk audibly to his escort at the risk of being hit again. When he is shoved and locked into the room, Yusuf is crouched behind the very worn sofa, trying not to hyperventilate.

Archy picks himself up and straightens himself out with a self-righteous grunt. Then he says, "Well you can come out now."

Yusuf does, and stares at him.

"What the fucking hell are you doing here?" he hisses. "What's happened?"

Archy sighs and regards the sofa with extreme suspicion before giving into the pain and exhaustion of having been struck and manhandled, and he sits gingerly. "Kent's been shot," he says. "Not fatally, but Johnny's got them both eating out of his hand for it. He called my bluff."

Yusuf stares at him, then comes around to the front of the sofa and stares at him some more. Archy glares up at him.

"Stop," he says.

"Sorry," says Yusuf. "I'm just trying to remember the word for this situation. Oh right. You miserable fucking cunt."

"There's no need for that," says Archy defensively.

"No, I daresay there's no need for _any_ of this," says Yusuf. "And yet here we are. What the hell have you gotten us into?"

"It's no worse that what you'd have gotten yourselves into," he says wearily, "I assure you."

"This is fantastic," says Yusuf. "So what now? What do you brilliantly suggest for this wildly surprising turn of events?"

"Would you get yourself under control?" snaps Archy.

"_I'm_ not the one who's royally fucked up twice now," says Yusuf. "Christ, this is why I never go into the field."

Archy looks up at him, managing immense disdain in spite of everything. "You're not _in_ the field," he says. "No one is asleep. You're just locked in a room. Stop complaining."

"I beg to differ," says Yusuf. "Outside this room are guns with real bullets that will actually kill me. I'd much prefer to be in someone's head right now. This is more of the fucking field than I ever needed."

Archy stands up suddenly, which doesn't feel terrific but he holds himself together impressively. "For fuck's sake, Yusuf, shut the hell up," he says. "You're acting like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. No one wants to be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern."

Yusuf is subdued more by what he sees as a completely unwarranted Hamlet metaphor than by anything else. His eyes narrow, wondering just how roughly Archy has been mistreated.

Impatiently, Archy explains, "They die at the end," as if this will clarify matters.

"Yes," says Yusuf, "that is generally the one thing that is widely known of them. Are you quite all right?"

"Never mind," says Archy. "Look. Your part of the plan is still in motion. It's gotten trickier but it's still the best bet we have. You need to keep it together."

"Fuck you," says Yusuf. "It was a stupid plan to begin with. Your future is completely up in the air right now, I don't even see why—"

"This is not about _me_, you ass," says Archy. "Your friends are in there and god knows what Johnny wants from them. As they say in America, man the fuck up."

Yusuf glares at Archy, but he backs down, because no one _does_ want to be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, if that's what people are saying nowadays.

"Fine," he says. "So, what now?"

"Now," says Archy calmly, sitting back down with as much dignity as he can summon, "we wait."

"Now, no one wants to be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," says Johnny, "and fortunately, you can be upgraded with almost no effort on your part. No one has to die at the end who didn't have it coming, everybody wins. Right?"

Eames and Kent have been taken into a smaller room where Kent has been allowed to sit down and they have both been offered the opportunity to cautiously decline a drink. Eames stands near Kent with his arms folded, his eyes tracking the smears of red painted across Johnny's shirt, the rest of the room blurring into a dim, desaturated mass.

"So, how about it," says Johnny. "One last job together, for old time's sake. Clear out all that bad history. And then you're all free to go. You can be top billed players, then, say, Laertes, and…" he squints at Kent, "…Osric. How's that sound?"

Back before he was part of the Wild Bunch, Eames led a very brief and very not-discussed life as a young actor. He's been Laertes before, but Johnny doesn't need to know that. He lifts his head.

"What about Arthur?" he says.

"Oh, you can take Ophelia with you too," says Johnny generously. "She's all yours. But you understand my need for collateral. We'll take her out of the pond and dry her off for you once things are all squared away, and not a moment sooner."

Eames doesn't like this. Eames has no reason to trust Johnny, still has no idea what is even being talked about. But he doesn't say anything. When he wants to, Eames is good at not saying anything.

"I'll take that as an okay," says Johnny. "Now, you've heard much talk of some big project I'm working on. Archy doesn't like it because Archy doesn't know what it is. And as a matter of fact, it rather concerns you. Quite lucky that you happened along, really."

Eames frowns. "What are you talking about?" he says.

Johnny smiles.

One Two opens the door and is extremely startled to see Archy there. Yusuf stands up.

"About fucking time," he says.

"What the hell's going on out there?" demands One Two. "Everybody's on edge. Johnny's got half the staff wandering around with enormous fuck-off guns. What are you doing here?" This to Archy, who rolls his eyes.

"Things aren't going well," he says. "I am open to suggestions."

One Two hesitates, because suggestions have never been his strong suit. "Um," he says.

"Look, if you can get me out of here we can bluff our way back to Johnny. You'll need to pass it off like he sent for me. But we've got to get Yusuf out of here, and we have to do both things at once. Understand?"

One Two nods, then hesitantly hands Yusuf his keys.

"You have got to be kidding," says Yusuf.

"This is the best I can do," says One Two. "The hallway just outside here isn't too covered right now, and once you get down a ways there's a whole line of locked doors. Bob's friend is behind one of them. Maybe you can find him, all right?"

Yusuf is dubious, but there seems to be nothing more outlandishly wrong with this idea than what is already on the surface. So he begrudgingly accepts the keys. "I don't suppose the rooms are numbered, are they?" he says.

One Two shrugs.

"Of course," says Yusuf. "That would just be so convenient."

"Look, just stay out of sight," says Archy. "We'll go out first, you follow if it's clear."

One Two and Archy get out with surprising ease, and Yusuf shortly finds himself wandering through a dark corridor with his heart in his throat and his hands sweating. He hates everyone for getting him into this right now.

He's in the process of listening with an ear pressed to each of the various doors, hoping for any evidence of an unhappy occupant, when he starts to hear something in the distance, like footsteps possibly coming towards him.

"Fuck this," he says under his breath and he fumbles for the key to the door directly in front of him. He finds it on the third try and opens it as quietly as he can.

"You can't be serious," Eames is saying. "You're making this up."

"Au contraire, mon ami," says Johnny with no trace of the appropriate accent.

Yusuf shuts the door very carefully behind him. The room is dark, stuffy, and he has the distinct feeling he's not alone. There's a soft glow coming from somewhere within, from something that strikes him as familiar, but he's too flustered to think straight and it isn't enough to illuminate anything. He gropes for a light switch, terrified of what he's about to find.

"No," says Eames. "No. Absolutely not. I will not."

"That isn't going to end well for you, I'm afraid," says Johnny with a sympathetic shrug.

Yusuf finds the light, and it takes him a moment to understand what he's looking at. The light was coming from the PASIV device which is on a table in the middle of the room, but it's the person it's hooked up to that is giving him trouble.

"Fuck you," says Eames, perhaps a bit rashly. "I don't want any part of this."

"Wait, what is the problem?" says Kent, completely lost. "Who the hell is Mr. Saito?"

Yusuf stares, but can't convince himself he's hallucinating. Eventually he pulls himself together and examines the machine. Saito has been unconscious for going on three days.

As gently as he can while swearing under his breath, Yusuf removes the needle. It takes Saito several moments to wake up, and when he does, he doesn't feel any better for it.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" says Yusuf.

Saito blinks at him. "What are _you_ doing here?" is all he has to say for himself.

Johnny shrugs. "Kent, is it?" he says. "I had them shoot your left shoulder because I thought it was a safe bet you're a right-arm man. Did I get it right?"

Reluctantly, Kent nods.

"Good," says Johnny." There's paper, pen, armed guard outside. Start designing something, doesn't have to be too complicated. Your basic extraction job." He looks at Eames. "You, come with me," he says. "You need some convincing."


	10. Eames the Liar

Johnny comes back it seems like hours later, and with him he brings the same cocky smile, the same giant weapon-toting guy (I think it's the same one, anyway, he's sort of nondescript in that intimidating armed goon way), and Eames, who for some reason is in his undershirt. Eames sees me and his heart stops; I see him and mine starts again.

"Eames," I blurt, and I'm appalled at how my voice sounds, all dry and breathless. I am dehydrated like nobody's business.

Eames sort of collapses towards me, immediately shoved down onto his knees for his trouble, Assault Rifle towering over him with the gun pressed hard to the back of his head. He couldn't care less, the way he's looking at me. Johnny wanders over, whistling some Beatles song. _Wait 'till I come back to your side / We'll forget the tears we cried_, that complete fucker.

"Told you I'd be back," he says. "And look, I brought the peanut gallery."

"Are you okay?" asks Eames, he looks fine, but by that I only mean uninjured; I can tell he's reached the end of his rope.

I barely manage a nod, which is sort of a bald-faced lie but it doesn't matter, because the way Johnny says "Oh he's fine, isn't that right, darling?" is enough to confirm that I am incredibly not okay.

"Don't fucking touch him," says Eames, stupid, wonderful idiot. Johnny's lapdog cocks the gun as aggressively as I could ever imagine a mechanism being, and still he just stares at me, and at Johnny as he nears me.

"What's going on?" I ask, completely confident that no one is going to answer me. "Eames?"

"Johnny, don't," is all Eames has to say. "Johnny, what are you doing?" I could have answered that.

Johnny reaches me and smiles again. Off with the sunglasses, into the interior pocket.

"Don't do this," I whisper out of Eames's earshot, my mouth barely moving. I don't know if I'm pleading for myself, for Johnny's sake, or for Eames. It doesn't matter. This is a situation where only the guy with the assault rifle can win.

"I love it when they beg," replies Johnny, and he reaches around me and draws up close. In the seconds before his lips touch me, seconds during which I can only assume Eames has gone into momentary paralytic shock, Johnny whispers, "Try anything stupid and he's dead."

Apparently I wasn't expected to work that out from the gun-in-back-of-head scenario.

Johnny kisses me and I swallow every impulse I have and leave myself for dead. Eames basically has a seizure.

Johnny sinks back down and licks his lips, his smile more grotesque by the moment. "So what's he like then, eh?" says Johnny over his shoulder. "Any specific areas of interest I should know about?" This as his fingers play along the small of my back. I am unable to resist a shiver, which pleases him.

"Fuck you," says Eames.

"I trust you're aware," says Johnny, turning his attention back briefly, "that there is an equal probability that you or your friend will die. All I need is the assistance of a familiar face, right? And while I must say I'd _rather_ it were you, Bobby-boy, I can go either way. One of you is going to have to give in to me or one of you is not long for this world. Understand?"

Eames does but he doesn't say anything. He wants something brilliant to hit him, some excellent way out of this that just hasn't come to him yet due to the stress and the outright shock. The barrel of the gun is cold and hard against his skin, but it feels like it's miles away. All he can do is stare, stone-faced, envisioning graphic variations of Johnny being set on fire on a loop.

"So what's it going to be?" Johnny turns back to me, switches his smile back on. "Who's going to break first?"

I still don't know what the hell the terms for which I'm being used as currency _are_, and I feel it might be prudent to mention this, but Johnny's fingers are on me again, opening my shirt, brushing along my skin. He slips one hand back down the front of my trousers and I can't choke back the sharp, frantic inhale.

Eames is ready to explode, wondering how far he can make it before the bullet hits him, wondering if he can throw the guy off balance and make a lunge for it before he gets back up. Eames knows it won't be enough.

"Johnny, stop," he says. "Stop!"

Johnny ignores him, mouth occupied along my neck, intent upon leaving marks. I refuse to cry out, I refuse to look anywhere but straight up, up at the ceiling, up at my wrists. If I look at Eames I'm done for, and that's exactly what Johnny wants. I can't be the first one to give in because I don't know where it'll get us, and Eames is the one whose life is in imminent danger. It has to be him. And he will break. Johnny knows him well, as well as I know him, better, he thinks, just because Johnny knows his stupid first name.

Johnny catches me staring upward and he leans away briefly. "Want to come down?" he asks, like he might actually consider it. "We can arrange that."

Johnny steps away and loosens the pulley and drags me down so I'm on the floor, on my knees. There are finite moments of relief here, the needling pain in my arms as the blood suddenly flows back into them, the flooding release of my shoulders from having held me up for so long; but Johnny is standing over me and Eames is right in my eye line now and I know what's coming and I don't know what Johnny wants from Eames but I don't want him to get it.

"Last chance, Mr. Eames," says Johnny, fingering my chin, tilting me to look up at him. I'm biting my lip hard enough to bleed.

"Don't," says Eames, and the desperation in his voice scares me a little.

Johnny turns to look at him. I could jump up right now if I had any confidence my legs wouldn't betray me, I could get him hard in the back of the head or in the kidney. I do that and Eames gets shot.

"I don't and you'll what?" he prompts.

Eames doesn't say anything, staring hard at Johnny. Johnny gives him a moment's grace period before turning back to me and grasping me hard by the back of the head.

"_Don't_," says Eames again, strangled and worn. "Don't. I'll do it. Leave him alone, I'll fucking do it, all right?"

"You'll do what?" I demand because I am not down with this course of events either. "Eames, what's he making you do?"

Johnny backhands me hard without even looking at me, and I am yanked back up off the floor so fast I almost dislocate something. He turns his back on me, turns on Eames.

"Good boy," he says. "Very good."

"Eames, whatever this is, don't do it," I say, and Johnny whips around and slaps his hand over my mouth, gripping me tightly and staring me in the eye. I am frozen silent.

"It's rude to interrupt," he says. He releases his hold, letting his fingers wander back down my neck, my chest, my stomach. "How very American of you."

"_Johnny_," says Eames in a strained voice, the strain is so harsh that I look, and I see with seconds to spare the exact same asshole who dragged me in here in the first place aiming a metal bar at the back of Assault Rifle's head.

This would not have been the best idea, given that when Assault Rifle pitches forward there are any number of things that could go horribly awry, like his finger tightening on the trigger or just the gun jamming into the back of Eames's neck. Which is probably why this guy says, "Hello, gorgeous."

Assault Rifle makes a sharp about-face and the bar hits him full in the jaw. Johnny turns and I am so fucking ready you would not believe; my fingers wrap around the wires holding me up and I hoist myself into the air and kick Johnny squarely in the spine. He lurches onto his knees with the most satisfying sound of unquestionable suffering that I have ever heard. I collapse back down, my arms are numb and my foot stings and I feel like I'm gonna pass out. Eames is here already, having paused only to kick Johnny aside, his head cracking hard on the concrete. He lowers me back down to the floor and struggles to unhook me, and I fall into his arms and breathe.

"Arthur, I'm so sorry," he keeps saying, over and over and over again, like I'm fucking dying or something. "I'm sorry, Arthur, I'm so sorry."

"Shh," I mumble, but he doesn't hear it. He's fumbling with the wrist cuffs and having no luck.

"One Two!" he yells with an urgency that just exhausts me. "I can't get him out of this."

One Two has been making sure the guy he just blindsided isn't getting up (he isn't) and hurries over. "What do you want me to do about it?" he says.

"Eames," I murmur with as much urgency as I can get into my voice right now. "Eames, that's the guy who—"

"I know," says Eames. "This is One Two. He's a fucking idiot and he's my friend, and he's sorry too."

I am a lot less inclined to forgive One Two, but Eames seems to think he can get me unlocked, so I'll take what I can get.

"I don't know if I have the key for that," says One Two.

"Well _check_," says Eames impatiently.

"I can't," says One Two. "I gave my keys to Yusuf."

"_What_?" says Eames. "Why?"

"Look, I'm not the one who fucked up this time," says One Two defensively.

Eames swears under his breath and gropes around for something that'll pass as lock-picking equipment. Johnny is already getting up, disoriented but okay. Johnny is a fucking monster.

"Uh, listen, Bob," says One Two.

"Hold on," says Eames, inspecting a nail he's found.

"_Eames_," I say, and he turns and sees: Johnny has risen like the motherfucking antichrist, limping a little and laughing at One Two like he hasn't a care in the world.

"One Two, of _course_," he says. "Well, this is a turn, isn't it? My fault for leaving the door open. I suppose I got too eager. 'Spose you let Archy out, didn't you?"

One Two, this guy I'm apparently supposed to be okay with, is frozen. Johnny walks calmly over to me and before Eames can move he yanks me up by my collar and wraps the wire around my throat.

Eames stands up, feels like he's been kicked in the chest, the wind knocked out of him. "Get the hell away from him," he says in a voice like a low growl.

"I think not," says Johnny. "Rather I think _you_ getting the hell away from _me_ suits the situation far more appropriately, don't you? Now." He tightens the wire a little and I already can't move and now I can't breathe.

"Where's Archy?" Johnny would like to know.

Archy is at this moment a ways down this same corridor, running as furtively as he can after strangling one of Johnny's armed guards with his bare hands only to be rewarded with a wounded Kent. Kent is extremely unhappy about everything he's been put through but was eventually convinced by Archy that running the fuck away was a better plan that sitting and doing Johnny's bidding. Kent is having a hard time believing that, and actually, so is Archy. One Two saw the open door and couldn't help himself, oh no, just _had_ to go in and try to save me and Eames, who in Archy's eyes were already doomed; so now it's very likely that Johnny has deduced that Archy's out and that Kent's free, and even if Johnny's a little incapacitated (which would be stupid luck on our part), he's Johnny and he'll be fine in a moment.

"Where are we _going_?" hisses Kent. There is a direct relationship between Kent's ability to assert himself and the likelihood of gunshot wound infection over time.

"We're finding Yusuf," says Archy, "and we're getting the hell out of here."

"What about Eames and—"

"Don't try my patience," says Archy, and he comes to a halt. He's nearing the other end of the corridor now, and he can hear voices. He holds up a hand for silence, which just makes Kent look at him with eyes narrowed, but Archy has other things on his mind. The voices he's hearing are too low for him to understand any of the words being said, but the sound quality is enough—this is not the casual conversation of people with big guns. These are the hushed tones of people who are really trying to avoid running into people with big guns.

He creeps along until he can pinpoint the particular door that's muffling the noise, and he tries the handle. It's locked, so at least Yusuf continues to not be a complete idiot. The voices have gone completely dead.

"Yusuf, open up," he says, leaning into the door. Kent looks both ways, convinced they are about to be attacked by ninjas. "It's Archy."

There's a hesitation, then he hears the clatter of keys and the lock turning. He pulls away. Yusuf opens the door just enough to glare at him. "Did you know about this?" he says.

Archy waits uncomfortably for the clarification that Yusuf is going to make him fish for. "About…?" he says.

Yusuf snaps the door open the rest of the way, revealing the other occupant of the room to be an extremely disgruntled Japanese man in an extremely expensive suit.

Archy opens his mouth and closes it again. "Ah," he says.

"Get in," says Yusuf impatiently, ushering Kent in first and then stepping back to begrudgingly allow Archy passage before he shuts and locks the door again.

"We should go," says Archy.

"Shut up and answer me," says Yusuf. "Did you or did you not know about this?"

Archy doesn't speak for a moment. "Well, which is it, shut up or answer you?" he says.

If he were pressured to assign himself a political affiliation, Yusuf might call himself a pacifist. Yusuf comes closer to hitting Archy than he has with anyone in over twenty years.

"I didn't, all right?" says Archy quickly, sensing Yusuf's proximity to his own boiling point. "This is, I presume, Mr. Saito."

Saito stands up. He's shaky from three days of recumbence, but still manages to straighten himself out with a dignified frown. Archy eyes him with an inexplicable instinct towards subservience.

"You presume correctly," says Yusuf.

"Eames got all upset about him," says Kent helpfully. "What's he doing here?"

Everyone looks slowly at Kent, who decides to sit.

"You mean _you_ knew about this?" says Archy with great disgust.

"What do you mean Eames got upset?" says Yusuf. "Upset about what?"

"Who the hell is this?" says Saito.

Kent is a little overwhelmed, and doesn't say much of anything for a moment.

"Kent," says Yusuf, gentler. "Where is Eames?"

"No," says Archy flatly. "We are not going on a rescue mission. One Two is already off getting all three of them killed doing that. We need to get the fuck out of here before Johnny finishes them off and comes for us."

"Archy, I'm talking to Kent right now," says Yusuf.

"Look, Johnny just said he was doing an extraction job on Mr. Saito," says Kent before anyone can ask him more questions. "He wanted me to design it and Eames to work with him. Eames wouldn't do it and Johnny took him away to convince him. That's all I know."

Yusuf absorbs this and straightens up with a glance at Saito, who has folded his arms with a grim expression. Archy, for his part, turns away and curses under his breath.

"Yes?" says Yusuf without looking at him. "You have something you'd like to share with the class?"

"Johnny's been setting this up for months," he says. "He's been keeping me out of the loop for _months_."

"What business do I have with this Johnny?" asks Saito sternly, in a way that compels Archy to answer.

"Mr. Quid has been trying to get into corporate ventures for years, Mr. Saito," he says. "I think it's safe to assume he's given up on the direct approach. I can only guess at what he wanted from you, but whatever it was seems to have been enough for him to risk losing everything he already has."

"Well he's not going to get it," says Yusuf. "We need to move."

"Oh, _now_ you want to," says Archy.

"Archy, you need to get Kent to a hospital," says Yusuf.

"Why do _I_—"

"Because you're the one who got him shot," says Yusuf, "by virtue of this all being your stupid fault from the beginning."

"And what about Arthur and Mr. Eames?" asks Saito, looking askance at Archy.

"I promise you, we'll all be better off leaving them for dead," says Archy. "Yusuf, you don't know Johnny like I do. Let's all just go while we still can."

"Wait," says Saito, who, even though he's only been brought in as a plot device and he's only been in this party for about a half hour all told, still manages to command enough importance that they all look to him for instructions without even realizing it. "There has to be something we can do. I assume you came here with an initial plan of how to handle Johnny Quid?"

Yusuf looks at Archy, who hesitates. "Yes, there is that," he says with caution.

"Fine," says Saito. "What was it?"

Yusuf doesn't want to say. Archy doesn't want to say. Kent is in no position to explain. Archy and Yusuf hold a stare down and Yusuf isn't giving in.

Archy rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. "Well…" he says.

One Two knows roughly where Archy is, though he doesn't know all that which followed. He doesn't, however, feel like just _telling_ Johnny. He, too, is hung up on the conviction that there has to be a way out of this. At this point Eames is totally ready to give Archy up, but he _doesn't_ know where Archy is. So he rolls with his gut instinct and improvises.

"Johnny, Archy could be anywhere by now," he says. "Let's get back to the matter at hand."

Johnny shakes his head, clutching me a little tighter. I'm just watching Eames. Gotta stay relaxed. "I can't say I'm terribly interested in that just now," says Johnny.

"This project," Eames says, relentlessly calm, though I can hear the quiver in his voice and I wonder if Johnny can too, "it's an extraction job, yeah? Arthur's the extractor, not me."

"Extractor's not what I need," says Johnny. "What I need is someone Mr. Saito can trust."

_What_. It takes every fiber of my self-control not to have an enormous reaction to that bit of oh-by-the-fucking-way information, but the wire around my neck is as good an incentive as any.

"Fine," says Eames. "But I can tell you Saito trusts Arthur more than me."

This is a lie. Saito thinks I am a little bit of an asshole, because that's generally what I am, professionally. He just _loves_ Eames. If Eames were to show up in his dream, Eames could convince Saito of just about any cover story and he'd have Saito eating out of his hand. I'm a terrible liar by comparison and seeing me wandering would only raise alarm bells. Furthermore Eames can look like anyone, and although this isn't unique to him when Johnny's involved, Eames knows Saito better, well enough to be just about anyone that'll get the job done. Eames is the better choice by far, he always was and this is probably why Eames didn't want me to know what was going on. Because Eames needs me to seem useful. I'm weak and there's no way I'll live past even the faintest inkling that I might not be useful to Johnny anymore.

The question is: just how well does Johnny know Mr. Eames?

Johnny stares at Eames for a long time, and I can practically feel him twitching, angry from having been briefly overpowered, nervous from having lost control for even that small moment, wanting to kill me. It's so palpable, how much he wants to kill me. Just breathe.

"Why do you want me to use Arthur?" says Johnny.

"Because whichever of us you use is going to get out of this alive," says Eames. "Saito's been through a lot in dream-sharing, and his memory's better than you might think. He'll know he had the dream, he'll remember one of us was there. If it gets back to him that whichever of us that was is dead, and it will get back to him, he'll know someone is up to something. And I can promise you, you don't want to be up against a Saito who knows there's something going on."

This is the truth. Surviving limbo has only improved Saito's ability to fuck you up royally. Johnny probably knows this; whether or not he's thought about it in these terms before is anyone's guess. From the way his hands flutter at it, though, my money's on extreme disappointment that he doesn't get to kill us both.

"You really expect me to believe you're willing to die for this punk?" says Johnny.

I haven't been called a punk in a long time. Eames smiles almost fondly at it.

"Yes," he says.

One Two turns to stare at Eames, completely floored by this revelation.

I don't know if he's lying or not anymore.

It's probably just as well, because Eames needs me to play along right.

"Eames," I say in feeble protest.

"Shut up," he says.

"I'm not extracting from Saito," I manage to get out before Johnny snaps the wire tight again and my voice dies in my throat.

"Then my death will be in vain," says Eames, "and that'll be a real shame. Ariadne might never forgive you."

That bastard. I want to grin, which is maybe the blood loss, but I hold it together. One Two has no idea what's going on and it's making him uncomfortable. Johnny is off center and he hates it, and it's liable to make him do something stupid. Fortunately for us, that stupid thing is shoving me aside and moving towards One Two so fast One Two doesn't even have time to flinch. He swipes a handgun out of One Two's trousers and One Two stumbles back, feeling a little violated, and Johnny about-faces and walks within arm's length of Eames. He cocks the gun and points it dead center between his eyes.

Gotta get up. I'm on the floor and every part of me hurts and I need water goddammit but I need to get up.

"So you're saying I can kill you," says Johnny. "Right now."

Eames doesn't respond.

"Johnny," I say, my voice a horrible mess but I guess that helps my credibility. "If you kill him now I'm not doing shit for you."

"I don't need you," hisses Johnny, keeping his eyes on Eames, and he sounds kind of like he's losing it now. "I don't need either of you. I can _be_ you."

"Nobody can be me," says Eames.

Johnny falters. He hears me get up and he turns and shoots without looking.

I've been shot before, but it hasn't been with a real bullet in years and years. I collapse back down and my hand comes away covered in blood. I don't even make a sound.

Eames knocks the gun right out of Johnny's hand and doesn't stop hitting him. One Two stands there for a few moments before nervously making his way over to me and giving me a moment's inspection.

"You're gonna be okay," he says, and he sounds amazed.

"Of course I am," I mutter impatiently. "Are you a good shot?"

"What?"

I cannot picture Eames being friends with this guy. "With a gun, are you a good shot?"

"Um," he says, hesitating like he doesn't want to disappoint me.

"Oh for fuck's sake. Give me the gun."

One Two doesn't feel like he should take orders from someone who is bleeding so much, but he snatches the gun off the floor while Johnny and Eames try to tear each other apart and hands it to me. It take it in both hands, still cuffed together, and I prop my arms against his leg and say, "Don't fucking move." I wait until Johnny's in range and then I fire. One Two twitches and I get him in the shoulder instead of the neck. I guess that's justice for Kent anyway.

He swears loudly, but this guy is a fucking machine: he actually _feigns_ collapsing and instead picks up One Two's discarded bit of pipe and pivots around on the floor, getting Eames full in the back of the knees and taking him off his feet. He climbs over Eames and holds it down against his throat, trying to strangle him with it. Eames struggles against him, but even one-handed Johnny is stronger than him, fueled by rage and insanity and the full terrifying force of long-stored adrenaline.

I'm fading fast, trying to pull myself together for another shot, but my vision's starting to blur.

"Should've just said yes, Mr. Eames," sneers Johnny as Eames tries to hurl him off. Johnny's knee is pressed into his stomach and together with the bar on his throat his vision isn't doing so well either.

Johnny barely feels it when it happens: the smallest prick in the side of his neck, near the gunshot wound. It's when it starts to flow through his veins that he stops applying pressure and sits up straight, rigid.

He manages to get up and turn around. Yusuf is there, needle in hand, breathing heavily with the stress of having done what he just did.

Johnny stares at him, recognition coming in second to the sinking feeling of familiarity deep in the pit of his stomach.

"What the fuck was that?" he says, quiet and deadly.

Yusuf doesn't want to answer. He didn't like this plan, didn't want to do it, but in the end he didn't have anything lethal with him and Archy was probably right that this was the best way. In the end he doesn't have to answer because Johnny knows, Johnny knows better than anyone ought to.

"Heroin," he says, his voice trembling a little. "You just shot me up with heroin."

Yusuf sounds ashamed when he says, "Yes."

For the first time perhaps in his life, Johnny doesn't have anything to say.

"I'm sorry," says Yusuf, and unbelievably, he actually means it.

"You will be," whispers Johnny, and he lifts the pipe again. Eames, who's managed to get to his feet, takes it right out of Johnny's hand and hits him as hard as he can in the side of the head, and Johnny's on the floor, and there's a really long silence.

"What the hell are you doing carrying heroin around?" is the first thing anyone says, and it's me, doing everything I can to stay awake.

Eames comes over to me and he kneels beside me, exhausted, beautiful.

"You never know when the old days are gonna come back to haunt you," says Yusuf.

"Tell me about it," says Eames. To me, he says, "Are you okay?"

"Do I look okay to you?" I say.

He smiles in spite of everything.

"Saito's getting us on a plane," says Yusuf. "We should probably hurry." He can't stop looking at Johnny, who's bleeding onto the floor. Yusuf knows he'll be fine somehow, because he's always fine, he's made a whole career of being fine. But Yusuf also knows he probably just took away everything Johnny's been working at for the past decade or so with one fell swoop, and, well. Yusuf wants to get out as fast as he can.

They get me unlocked and Eames and One Two pick me up off the floor and I'm drifting in and out until god knows how much time has gone by and Eames says it's okay, Arthur, just go to sleep.


	11. Finishing Touches

_Hello?_

_Hello?_

My eyes flutter open, out of the dream. There was a girl's voice, electronic and distorted, like drifting out of a cell phone. Is someone calling me? No, that doesn't make sense. I lift my head and my eyes come to a tired focus on my phone, sitting idly on the bedside table, beside Eames's battered copy of _Good-Bye to All That_. For several moments I wait, wondering if I'll hear it again. She sounded ghostly and anxious, and it made me a little afraid.

When eventually I am sure it was just an echo from the recesses of my mind, I roll over gingerly onto my back. There's a dull ache coming to me from all over my body, but I haven't found my voice enough to moan. The ceiling fan is whirring gently, and for a moment it is the one static object in a spinning room. I close my eyes and open them again and everything rights itself.

For a long time I gaze upwards, not really thinking much of anything, just lying there. After a hypnotically long time I become aware that Eames is sitting on the edge of the bed, watching me.

I look at him. "Hello," I say.

"Hello," he says.

Long pause. There are a lot of things I have to ask, and I want to ask them all with as few words as possible.

I settle for "What happened?"

He shrugs. "It's been a few days. Everybody's lying low, but it looks like Johnny's leaving us be, for now anyway."

"How long do you think that's gonna last?"

He looks away for a while. "I don't think he's going to come after us," he says. "I think he's pretty well done for."

I find myself wondering if what I last saw of Johnny wasn't the end of the story. I decide not to ask.

"You okay?" asks Eames, looking at me again. "You were in and out for a while there. Last night was your first full sleep."

"I feel okay," I say. This is sort of a lie, and he sees right through it, but he doesn't push me.

The silence is oppressive, but I am exhausted and I don't feel the need to break it.

"Well," he says finally. "I don't quite know where to begin."

"What happened to everyone else?" I ask, my eyes closed, pretending away the residual pain.

"Yusuf's home, Saito's back with his people. Kent got taken care of and went back home as soon as he could," says Eames. "He's pretty sore about the whole thing."

"Really," I say. "What about Archy?"

Eames laughs like something is really funny. I open my eyes and look up at him. "He's working for Saito now."

"Oh my god," I say. "You're shitting me."

"No. I wish you'd been conscious on the plane. Archy took to him like a moth to flame. Within minutes he was offering advice on corporate endeavors. Saito hired him the moment we touched ground."

I am finding this less hard to believe the more I think about it, but at the same time I'm extremely suspicious that Eames is fucking with me. "Are you fucking with me?" I ask.

"I am not," says Eames with a smile. "Say what you will about Archy, but he's a damn fine businessman. Saito knows one when he sees one, after all."

I shake my head and am about to ask about the Scottish guy (I finally figured that accent out) with the numerical name, when there's a timely and timid knock on the door.

Eames gets up quickly and opens it. One Two is there, peering in at me.

"Well, hey," says One Two brightly, inviting himself in. "It lives."

"At last," says Eames.

One Two looks back and forth between us awkwardly, shifting his weight. "Look, eh," he says, "I figure I should be on my way soon. Finally tracked Mumbles down."

I manage to prop myself up on my elbows, which is somewhat excruciating but I can sacrifice personal comfort for being in on the conversation. "Mumbles the guy who was dead?" I say.

"Yes," says Eames. "The whole thing was a blind. We don't know who started it exactly, but after we got back Yusuf tracked Mumbles down in a day. He thought we were dead too, of course."

"Wow," I say. I don't know how to feel about this, and I'm not totally sure why. "Family reunion," I say moments later, and there's something in my tone that makes Eames look at me for a moment with an illegible expression.

"Congratulations," I say, and this breaks the moment and Eames turns back to One Two.

"Yeah," says Eames. He and One Two look at each other like they don't know what to say to each other and never have.

"It was good to see you, Bob," says One Two with real feeling.

Eames smiles and pulls One Two in for a hug, which One Two accepts dubiously, giving Eames sort of a perfunctory slap on the back.

"Stop bein' such a gay," mutters One Two in a vigilant but ultimately doomed attempt to maintain his gruff exterior.

Eames laughs and shoves him away. "Stay in touch this time," says Eames. "And for god's sake stay out of trouble."

"Whatever," says One Two. He looks over to me. He feels obligated to say something, and what comes out is, "Well done Arthur, staying alive and all. No hard feelings?"

I stare at him.

"Oh, he's fine," says Eames, patting One Two on the shoulder and maneuvering him out of my line of vision. "Just tired. Not too talkative yet."

"Right," says One Two.

"Now bugger off, will you?" Eames steps out into the hallway with him.

What I don't see for the fractional moment they spend in the hallway together, just outside the door, is the look One Two gives Eames, which is very unlike him. Eames is not Bob anymore, and it has left them worlds apart. One Two is jealous, and proud of his friend, but he'll never admit that.

"Well," he says.

"Go on," says Eames. "We've said too many goodbyes already."

One Two punches him lightly in the arm and turns. He doesn't look back, and Eames doesn't watch him go. Eames comes back in and shuts the door.

"Sorry about that," he says.

I shrug. I've sunk down onto my back, staring fixedly up at the ceiling.

Eames comes back and sits down again, this time closer to me. I refuse to make eye contact, not just yet.

"You're upset," says Eames.

"Of course I'm fucking upset," I say, and it just cascades out of me, catching me completely unawares. Eames of course saw it coming ages ago. "I got tortured, molested, shot and almost garroted by a guy you _knew_ was dangerous, knew we shouldn't get mixed up with, and you never warned me, didn't do anything to stop it. Because you just _had_ to delve back into this bullshit, just had to find out which of your completely alive-and-well friends was supposedly dead, didn't you? Dragged Yusuf into it, dragged in some hapless asshole we don't even _know_—"

"Quite possibly saved Saito's life—" cuts in Eames, calm and collected, which infuriates me for some reason.

"Yes, well, lucky us," I say, pulling myself back up to a sitting position, wincing with the effort. "Saito is not the point. Yes, he could have died. _Everybody_ could have died." I stop myself because the combined effort of sitting up and yelling is too much for me. "Was it worth it?" I ask.

He looks at me steadily. "Yes," he says. "It was, because everyone made it out okay, because we stopped him from doing anything to Saito and fucked him up properly. It was, because even though you're angry with me, and you have every right to be, you know a lot more about me than you would have had I not gone through with this. Because I am a coward, Arthur."

Whatever I was expecting, it wasn't this.

He looks down at his hands, which are limp. "I don't know that I ever would have told you about any of it. And whatever you know now, I'm glad."

Eames doesn't want to be the bad lie. Eames wants to be the bad liar.

I reach out, weak and determined, and wrap my fingers around his.

He smiles down at it for a moment, then he says, "I saw you, you know."

My hand falters.

What?

"What?" I ask, trying to remember what it was I did.

"With my projection," he says, and looks at me.

Oh.

"Ah," I say. Does that count as cheating on someone? Does it count if it's technically the same person, even though it isn't at all? I wonder suddenly, perhaps instinctively wanting to escape this thoroughly weird conversation, whether I accidentally incepted Johnny Quid with the idea that I was a hot piece of ass because I made out with part of his subconscious.

"Why'd you do it?" asks Eames, and his tone is calm as ever, just curious, because who wouldn't be, really?

I don't know how to answer that one. I start talking and words come out. "I just… I thought I might never get to be with that part of you. And I wanted to know what it was like, even though it wasn't really… he was just part of Johnny's…" What am I saying? Flustered, I finish with really choice defensive stammering. "I just—I don't know, okay? I was confused, it was confusing."

Eames reaches over and he kisses me deeply, which is startling. His arm is around my waist, supporting me gently, careful to avoid the parts of me that are still healing. He pulls away, leaving me wordless, and rests his forehead against mine.

"How was that?" he asks quietly.

I am very bewildered by the whole series of events, and I wonder suddenly how many drugs I am on right now. "I don't even know," I answer pretty honestly.

He pulls inches away, gazes at me, breathes. "I am sorry," he says. "I am sorry for all of it, and sorry I couldn't just tell you."

"Why _couldn't_ you?" I ask. "What, you used to go by Handsome Bob? Used to hang out with a vaguely homophobic inept Scottish gangster? It's not _that_ surprising."

"I don't want to be there anymore," he says. "I want to be someone else now."

I look at him, tilting my head a little, thoughtful. "You are," I tell him.

"You don't get it, Arthur," he says. "That's all I ever am."

He looks at me, and in a moment I understand that he has never been able to narrow himself down into one person. Handsome Bob was a contradiction of a gentler man who wanted more, wanted distinction and grace, and wanted his best friend. He was smarter than he acted and he acted better than most people. And since then he's been everyone and anyone, he can be whoever he wants you to think he is, and it's all confidence, isn't it? It's all the conviction that he himself carries, that he is this person or that person. If he believes it, the audience believes it, and he can make anyone see him as anyone. So who is that lie for—is it for everyone else, or is it for him?

"So," I say quietly. "So who the fuck is Robert Eames?"

He flinches so very slightly at the use of his full name, barely even visible, a little tremor I can feel beneath my fingertips.

"I don't know," he says.

"Yeah, well," I say, and this time I pull from another Harrison Ford movie, only it's not Harrison Ford that I quote when I say, "I don't care."

Again he looks at me, and it's one of those moments where it doesn't matter anymore, because it's exhausting to think like this, and no one ever really arrives at a conclusion, do they? No one knows who he is because no one necessarily has to. We define ourselves, or judge each other, or we never know and that's the way it's always going to be.

Come here. Come closer.

Remember when we met? Layers and layers of makeup and hair and nail polish and nicotine, chains and chucks and jeans and dark jackets. Remember the way it all fell apart, how you lied to break my lie, and how it all came crashing down at the first sign of weakness I could give. Remember every single moment of my stupid little life. Remember the stupid words, I love you, and the stupider words, I know. Remember all of it, or none of it, or whatever you want. Because I don't care.

"I love you."

So difficult, and yet so easy, that I don't even notice it's slipped out.

He smiles into my shoulder, suppressing a laugh. "Obviously," he says.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Eames.

END

* * *

**Disclaimer:** All characters and events from _RocknRolla_ are the property of Guy Ritchie and Warner Bros. All characters, elements and concepts from _Inception_ are the property of Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. The song quoted by Johnny Quid in Chapter 8 is "Opposite Day" by Andrew Bird; the song whistled by Johnny Quid in Chapter 10 is "Wait" by The Beatles. References to other movies include _The Empire Strikes Back_, _Reservoir Dogs_, _Brick_ and _The Fugitive_. _Hamlet_ is the property of nobody, but also Shakespeare. _Good-Bye to All That_ is the property of Robert Graves. There is probably more that isn't mine, but I'll leave it there. Thanks for reading.


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